STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE

THE CONDITIONS OF A SOLITARY BIRD '1'1 (AN ANALYSIS OF THE WORKS OF )

A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in

English

by

Gordon Frank Richiusa

June, 1978 Frank Richiusa is approved:

7

Mitchell Marcus

John Stafford, Chairman I I

California State University, Northridge

ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to here give my thanks to all those who have helped me with the completion of this work, Professors Reid, Marcus and Newman, Joanne Sparber and Charlene Bones and especially Professor John Stafford, without whose help this work would have never been begun, let alone completed.

iii CONTENTS

Pe~;ge ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... iii

ABSTRACT ...... ' . v Chapter

1. INTRODUCTION . . ·. o • o o o 1

2 . THE ROLE OF CARLOS, CARLITOS AND CASTANEDA THE AUTHOR . . . 6 3, FOUR BOOKS, ONE STORY--THE STYLE OF

PRESENTATION . o o o o o o o o 21 4. TRACING PERSONAL HISTORY: CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS o 43

5. FROM PLATO TO JUANCHO 64

6. OR ART? o 76

7. CONCLUSION o 87

APPENDIX o o • 90 BIBLIOGJLI\PHY , 94

iv ABSTRACT

THE CONDITIONS OF A SOLITARY BIRD

(AN ANALYSIS OF THE WORKS OF CARLOS CASTANEDA)

by

Gordon Frank Richiusa

Master of Arts in English

The following is a "total critical" examination of four of the works of Carlos Castaneda; The Teachings of Don

Juan, A Separate Reality, Journey to Ixtlan, and Tales of

Power. This mode of analysis is based on Professor Robert

Reid III's Ph.D. dissertation contention that works of lit­ erature, instead of being analyzed from a single perspective should be examined from several perspectives to insure a more encompassing evaluation of a work's literary merits.

I have taken Professor Reid's thesis and used it as a starting point for this study, and have, therefore, divided this paper into chapter sections with each section dealing with a separate aspect of the Castaneda 1vorks.

Within this framework I have strived to interrelate the

v individual sections not only to one another but each

section to three overriding assumptions that I have made about the works in question. The first assumption is that the Castaneda books are literature (whether they are factual accounts, as the author contends or fictional works as many believe). The second assumption is that these books are worthy of study from all the perspectives, including the total critical perspecti~e. And third, I have assumed that the four books, although enjoyable as units each unto them­ selves, should be read together as a total unit to grasp these works' full impact.

The conclusions I have arrived at in this study are that these three assumptions are facts and the importance of this study therefore is derived as much from the process

itself (the total critical analytic process) as from the results from the inquiry.

vi Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

Since 1968 when the first book of the Castaneda series appeared on the seller's shelves, literally millions have been kept spellbound by the wit, magic, struggles and, in short, the various doings and not-doings of two bril­ liantly drawn characters, an old Indian sorcerer called Don Juan Matus and his innocuous apprentice from U.C.L.A., named Carlos. What has been most fascinating as we trudged up and down hills and across deserts, learned from and were baffled by the various teachings of Don Juan, is the diversity of responses and reactions that the four books, The Teachings of Don Juan, A Separate Reality, Journey to Ixtlan, and Tales of Power have generated. And though the books have been bitterly attacked as much as praised, even the most violent detractors all seem to find something, in some way, positive to say about the books. The key point of objection seems to stem from either an intrinsic dislike of the ideas that were being

~xpounded or a disbelief in the major controversial conten­ tion df Castaneda's that the books were completely factual accounts.

1 2

It was not until recently that the question of their value on a purely artistic level has been even con- sidered. Unfortunately, the phrase "literary value" always seems, in these cases, to take on a pejorative sense. Very few people are willing to accept the fact that popular, possibly non-fictional, works were actually well written, which could indeed account for much of their po~ularity. This has recently changed somewhat as is evidenced by the remarkable fact that I, a Master's candidate, was allowed to write my thesis on these books. Anthropologists were analyzing from their own information-gathering perspective. Drug aficionados (anthropologists in their own right) scrutinized new ways to absorb intoxicating chemicals. Philosophers followed the philosophy of the books and compared them to Plato, Blake, Wittgenstein and others. Eastern cultists were forever finding similarities between the teachings of Juan and Suzuki's book of . All those who examined these books from their own perspectives found good and bad qual­ ities in each text. But one perspective was overlooked and that we shall name what Dr. Robert Reid III named it in his doctoral dissertation, the "total critical perspective."1 I was introduced to the term in 1972, but it was not until recently, when struck by some words of Don Juan's

1Robert Franklin Reid, III, Process and Criticism: A Theory of Meaning (University of Pittsburgh, 1973). 3

in a passage from Tales of Power that the con~ept took me in its own totality.

Only if one pits two views against each other can one weasel between them to arrive at the real world. . I meant; that one can arrive at the totality of oneself only when one fully understands. that the world is merely a view, regardless of whether that view belongs to an ordinary man or a sorcerer.2

The total critical perspective points out that obviously there are a number of views from which one may judge and analyze a work of literature. But seldom, if ever, are all views considered of equal value. The total critical perspective labels these more general perspectives using terms set down by Myer Abrams in The Mirror and the

Lamp. These general perspectives are 'mimetic,' 'expres- sive,' and 'pragmatic.' These are divided into more spe- cialized areas, such as scholarship, content, form, textu- ality, and texturality. It is not my intention to restate in brief what Professor Reid so painstakingly prepared after months of research and diligent, labor. 3 Let it suffice to say that the method which was named above will be the one used in this thesis. It is for this reason that the thesis has been broken up into chapter sections so that we might examine the parts separately with comments made

2 carlos Castaneda, Tales of Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), p. 240.

3contact Professor Reid at C.S.U.N. for further information. 4 intermittently as to how the parts relate to. the whole.

Thus, we hope to adhere to a more total critical perspec­ tive, than any that have been applied to the Castaneda series thus far.

This choice was made not only in a kind of aesthetic response to the basic proposition of the four Castaneda books about the nature of reality, but also, because of the diversity of subjects and areas of interest that the four books touch upon. And because of the relationship that the author has created with his characters I felt that biograph­ ical material about the author would be a good starting point for this examination.

The second chapter "The Role of Carlos, Carlitos, and Castaneda the Author, 11 follows the development of the character of "Carlos" in the text as well as "Castaneda" of the authorial world, but also investigates some possible explanations for these developments and the symbiotic rela­ tionship that the character "Carlos" and the author

"Castaneda" established throughout the thirteen year period during which the books were written.

The third chapter, "Four Books, One Story," deals mainly with the style of presentation, where evidence will be submitted to justify my contention that although each book was presented as an individual entity, the four books can and, indeed should be examined as a single unit. 5

The fourth chapter is of a highly fact-searching nature and is called "Tracing Personal History; Character

Development of the Main Character." Here I deal almost exclusively with what we know about the characters of the books from the books themselves. The main emphasis of course is on Don Juan and Genaro. But all characters will find a spot in this discussion.

In the fifth chaP,ter, "From Plato to Juancho," I attempt to root out possible strains of influence in the philosophy of the books.

In the sixth chapter, I get to the source of the major problem of accepting the four books as factual accounts. This chapter is entitled "Anthropology or Art" and in it I discuss also possibly the greatest barrier for acceptance that these works have encountered, the problem of translation.

The conclusion, of course, brings all these con­ siderations to a close and sorts out what has been achieved by this study. Chapter 2

THE ROLE OF CARLOS, CARLITOS AND CASTANEDA THE AUTHOR

Am9!lg those relationships that exist between the

•Pthor ~nd his characters., there perhaps can be found no p~r~ll~l for that whi~h has been created between Carlos

G9-staneda ~nd the character "Carlos." There are a number gf very interesting peculiarities involved in this relation­ 'hip, In thi$ chapter we will discuss solely the character of C~rlo$, However, thi$ discussion of a single character will neee$$itate ~ kind of splintering in a schizophrenic

'@!l?~ gf the word. For during the course of the four books J19t only gig the bgOk$ themselves develop a fascinating,

~v~n ~l~$$iC ch~racter for the reader, but also the author

Carl9$ Castaneda developed into a character of fascination him~elf. There was a 1 $ynchronized' development. Before we survey the intricate character of Carlos, hi$ fvnction ~nd purpose, let us discuss Castaneda the man.

Th~n we might be better able to get a grasp on the psycho­

~ynchro$ymbiQsis, the mutual need, that the two Carlos' developed for one another. This need emerged from a single mind, yet produced two $eparate, complex personalities that

6 7 began to rely on each other for their very existence as well as their development.

To understand the various possible reasons for the creation of this psychosynchrosymbiosis, one must first be convinced of the existence of more than one character, a

"Carlos" of the books as separate from the Carlos of the authorial world. Therefore, I will first trace a bit of

~ach character's persona~ history.

What do we know about Carlos the character solely from what is written in the texts about him? His biograph­ ical sketch would go something like this: Carlos attended college at the University of California at during the summer of 1960 and, we must assume, during some semesters previous and following. Somewhere in the course of this same summer, Carlos met an old Yaqui Indian in a bus depot in an Arizona border town. The "teachings" that would culminate in his gaining membership in the world of , began on June 23, 1961. Carlos had read The

Tibeten Book of The Dead, 1 some poems by Juan Ramon Jiminez 2 entitled 11 El Viage Definitivio" (The Definitive Journey), 3 a poem by San Juan de la Cruz from "Dichos de Luz y Amor"

1 carlos Castaneda, A Separate Reality: Further Con­ versations with Don Juan (New York: S1mon and Schuster, 1971), p. 193. 2 carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), p. 266. 3 castaneda, Tales of Power, Epigraph. 8 and, we must assume, a few books on anthropology and some on botany. Befbre he became an apprentice, when Carlos was six years old, we're told his mother left. When he was eight he spent the most hellish year of his life circulating among his mother's sisters. On this experience Carlos goes on to say,

Each of my aunts had a large family, and no matter how careful and protective the aunts were toward me, I had twenty-two cousins to contend with. Their cruelty \vas sometimes bizarre'. I felt then that I was sur­ rounded by enemies, and in the excrutiating years that followed I waged a desperate and sordid war . . . which logically extended to the school grounds.4

Carlos continues this personal anecdote about his ruthless school years. He attended rural schools where the first and third graders were "separated only by a space between the desks." And then he met a little flat-nosed first grader that had been nicknamed "Button-nose." Carlos used to pick on this boy (whoie name was Joaquin) haphaz­ ardly. But little Joaquin still seemed to like Carlos in spite of everything he did to him. One day Carlos delib­ erately toppled over a large standing blackboard; "It fell on him (Joaquin); the desk in which he was sitting absorbed some of the impact but still the blow broke his collar bone." Carlos was greatly affected by this incident and vowed never to be victorious again if Joaquin could be

4 Ibid., p. 117. 9

cured. This we are told was the main reason Carlos could 5 not change as easily as Don Juan would have liked.

Another interesting tale we are told about the early

events of Carlos' life revolves around his years on his

grandfather's leghorn chicken farm, where he hunted a large

number of birds.

It all began with my grandfather's explosion of anger upon taking count of his young chickens. They had been disappearing, in a steady and disconcerting manner.

"Carlos" further goes on with the story of how the

cause of the disappearance was discovered to be a white

falcon that Carlos was goaded by his grandfather to hunt.

This event is ended when Carlos, having the bird in his 6 rifle sight decides not to shoot.

When Carlos was older he had a beautiful blonde

girlfriend whom he lost because he was "accessible," as

Don Juan puts it; "you were always within her reach and

your life was a routine one." This of course was another barrier that Carlos needed to overcome to be able to benefit

from the teachings. 7

In Journey to Ixtlan Carlos tells us that he'd

always wanted to be an artist but was not successful. "I

always wanted to be an artist and for years I'd tried my

5castaneda, A Separate Reality, pp. 140-141. 6 castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan, p. 31. 7 Ibid., p. 69. 10 hand at that. I still have the painful memory of my fail­ ure."8 Carlos seems to have a lot of painful memories which we are told about in a nebulous fashion on a number of occasions, and they stem usually from his dislike of himself. Another representative passage in Journey to

Ixtlan begins as most of the others do when something inde­ scribable aroused some deeply buried emotions in Carlos.

I began to talk about my life. I confessed that I had never respected· or liked anybody, not even myself, and that I had always felt that I was inher­ ently evil, and thus my attitude towards others was always veiled with a certain bravado and daring.9

During the course of the entire series there are only a very.few passages that deal with the personal history of the character of Carlos, and not once anywhere in the four books is there even a hint of a description of his physical appearance. But then the books are supposed to be of a non-fiction nature and one is to assume that the

"character" Carlos looks like and, in fact, is the author

Castaneda. This just simply is not the case, that is, as far as new facts will bear out. What is meant by this is that we really don't know which facts to believe or which to disbelieve, or how far to associate the character of Carlos with the man Castaneda. Nor do we know if what we are told about the man Castaneda is any less a creation, in

8 1bid_.' p. 81. 9 _!bid.' p. 183. 11

a literary sense, than what we are told about the character

'Carlos.' There may very well be an authorial 1 Carlitos'

who is purposefully fictionalizing what we knmv about the

character in the books; there may also be an author who is

taking a bit of poetic license with what he is choosing to

share with us about Castaneda. Thus, the schizophrenic gap

continues to grow into an abysmal chasm.

In February of 1973 an interview of Carlos Castaneda

appeared in Harpers Magazine. A totally trusting inter-

viewer very wisely allowed the, by then, 'Doctor' Castaneda

to speak freely and without interruption about his past and

future. The story in this article sounds remarkably like

that which one might piece together by sorting out informa­

tion from the Castaneda books.

I was born in . My mother died when I was little, so I was reared on my grandfather's farm by eight aunts. My father was a professor--he was usually away teaching. When I was fifteen, I came to Los Angeles to live with a family here and go to Hollywood High. I went to U.C.L.A. and tried art and psychology before I decided on anthropology.lO

At first glance there seems to be little or no

difference between the character 'Carlos' and his authorial

counterpart. The only new information deals with the period

of Carlos' life for which we have no facts in the books,

that period from early teens to the writing of a doctoral

dissertation in anthropology. Unfortunately, when more

10 Gwyneth Cravens, "Talking to Power and Spinning with the Ally," Harpers Magazine, February 1973, p. 93. 12

"facts11 are compiled--when Castaneda is allow~d to speak freely and uninterruptedly about his personal history--some very interesting implausibilities emerge.

In a more exhaustive and enterprising article than the one in Harper's, a Time Maga~ine team took the trouble not only to let Castaneda speak freely but also to check what he said against verifiable records. The result is surprising at first reading; but then on reflection less surprising.

In a biographical segment in Time's article,

Castaneda's account of his life and the researchers' are pitted against one another. Following is perhaps the most complete printed account of how Castaneda described the events of his life from birth to the "Don Juan days." This section is important enough to b~ quoted here at length:

By his own account, Castaneda was not his original name. He was born he said, to a '·'well-known'·' but anon­ ymous family in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Christma?· day, 1935. His father, who later became a professor of literature, was then seventeen and his mother fifteen. Because his parents were so immature, little Carlos was packed off to be raised by his iliaternal grandparents on a chicken farm in the back country of Brazil .... When Carlos was six, his story runs, his parents took him back and lavished guilty affection on him . . . a year later, his mother died. . . . Now Carlos was left with his father. . . . Castaneda describes his father's efforts to become a writer as a farce of indecision, but he adds, ur am my fatheru. . . . Carlos was put into a very proper Buenos Aires Boarding school, Nicolas Avellaneda. He says he stayed there until he was fifteen, acquiring the Spanish (he already spoke Italian and Portuguese) in which he would later interview Don Juan. But, he became so unmanageable that an uncle, the family patriarch, had him placed with a foster family in Los Angeles. In 1951 he moved to the U.S. 13

and enrolled at Hollywood High. Graduating two years later, he tried a course in sculpture at Milan's Academy of Fine Arts, but, nr did not have the sensitivity or the openness to be a great artist." Depressed, in crisis, he headed back to Los Angeles and started a course in social psychology at U.C.L.A. shifting later to an anthropology course. Says he, ~I really threw my life out the window. I said to myself; if it's going to work, it must be new. '.1 In 19 59 he formally changed his name to Castaneda.ll

Thus, the Time researchers tell us, is Castaneda's autobiography. It was concise, consistent and rather artis- tically constructed. For·, as was discovered upon examina- tion of public files, the body of this story was "largely untrue."

What follows next is also to be found in this same exhaustive article and is what was discovered about Carlos

Castaneda, the author, from the public records and apart from any intermediation on Castaneda's part.

Between 1955 and 1959 Carlos Castaneda was enrolled, under that name, as a pre-psychology major at Los Angeles City College. His liberal studies included, in his first two years, two courses in creative writ­ ing and one in journalism ..Vernon King, his creative­ writing professor at L.A.C.C., still has a copy of '·'The Teachings'·' inscribed "To a great teacher, Vernon King, from one of his students, Carlos Castaneda ...." Moreover, immigration records show that a Carlos Cesar Arana Castaneda did indeed enter the U.S., at San Fran­ cisco when the author said he did; in 1951. This Castaneda too was 5 ft. 5 in., weighed 140 pounds and came from Latin America. But, he was Peruvian, born on Christmas day, 1925, in the ancient Inca town of Cajamarca, which makes him 48 not 38 this year .... His father was not an academic, but a goldsmith and watchmaker namea-resar Arana Burungaray. His mother, Susana Castaneda Navoa, died not when Carlos was six

11 . "Don Juan and the Sorcerer's Apprentice," Time, March 5, 1973, p. 43. 14

but when he was twenty-four. Her son spent three years in the local high school in Cajamarca and then moved with his family to Lima in 1948, when he graduated from the Colegio Nacienal de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe and then studied painting and sculpture, not in Milan, but at the National Fine Arts School of . One of his fellow students there, Jose Bracamonte remembers hi~ pal Carlos as a resourceful blade who lived mainly off gambling (cards, horses and dice) and harbored ''like an obsession" the wish to move to the U.S. 11 We all liked Carlos recalls Bracamonte. He was witty, imaginative, cheerful--a big liar, and a real friend.r' .... Cas­ taneda apparently wrote home sporadically, at least until 1969, the year after "Don Juan'·' came out. His ·cousin Lucy Chavez, who was raised with him l.flike a sister," still keeps his letters. They indicate that he served in the U.S. army, and left it after suffering a slight wound or nnervous shockn--Lucy is not sure which. (The Defense Department however, has no record of Carlos Castaneda's service.) 1 2

In arriving at the importance of all this the over­ whelming concensus among those who wrote about Castaneda seems to set up a major problem: are Castaneda's books as big a fabrication as the story of his life which he told a number of reporters and interviewers?

It is obvious that Carlos is just as big a liar as

Jose Bracamonte says that he is. Where I differ with past researchers is in the relative importance of the lies and the importance of the fact that the lies were told at all.

The basic thesis of Richard DeMille's book

Castaneda's Journey; the Power and the Allegory is that if

Castaneda told these lies it follows that he is lying about his books being non-fiction. Many other researchers, on the other hand, dismiss Castaneda's personal creativity by

12 Ihid., p. 44. 15 saying that Carlos has a right to absolute control over his

identity and besides he is a sorcerer and not to be :bothered 13 with his past.

There are strengths to both of these perspectives,

However, could we not take both arguments one step further and ask still another question about the significance of the untruths? If indeed the author Carlos Castaneda has falsified information about the events of his life should we·not assume that those facts that he has chosen to alter or create were selected for alteration with the same delib- eration and purposefulness that any author would be assumed to possess. If the "lie-facts" were chosen only as care- fully as any information contained in the novels one would have to consider them of equal importance to anything found in any work of fiction.

And then one wonders, if any of the so-called

"verifiable" facts are valid as well. It is totally possi- ble, taking the scope of these likely fabrications that nothing that we know about the man Castaneda is valid.

Might not one who willingly lies to his own cousin about service in the U.S. armed forces be likely to falsify an easy few numerals on the date of his birth certificate?

Looked at in this light, could we not then ask why Castaneda

r'chose" to be born on Christmas day? Is there room for a

13 Richard DeMille, Castaneda's Journey; The Power and the Allegory (Santa Barbara: Capa Press, 1976). 16 possible messianic complex? Richard DeMille questioned a number of people on how they felt about the possibility that the Don Juan books were fiction. One response deserves quoting on this point: "Don Juan is the most important model for a man since . If he is imaginary, then

Carlos Castaneda is the principle psychological, spiritual an d l 1"t erary gen1us. o f recent generat1ons.. 1114 Compliments like this could go to one's head were one not possessed of the humility of a sorcerer, such as Castaneda is professed to be.

On another count, if the author's father was an academic, the symbol for a young academic struggling to break the bonds of his past begins to stretch over genera- tions and becomes allegory. But, if we are to assume the

"verifiable facts" are correct and the author's father was a goldsmith and watchmaker an equally all-encompassing symbol dealing with a value system that transcends any one social or monetary begins to take shape, or one that relates to the Don Juanian view that all experience is recollection and that 'time' has no meaning.

Going to the Castaneda texts for a moment, we might try to flesh out at least one of those symbols briefly. In

Separate Reality, for instance, Carlos tells Don Juan of a deep feeling of despondency and hopelessness which he

14 rb·· d p. 24 . . -~'' 17

experienced at the sight of a group of youngsters eating leftovers from a table at a restaurant. "I left that city feeling that there was no hope for those children whose world was already molded by their day after day struggle for crumbs.'' Don Juan uses this sympathy in Carlos, as always, to make Carlos feel ridiculous and also to make a point, Didn't you once tell me that in your opinion man's greatest accomplishment was to become a man of knowledge? . . . Then how could you feel sorry for those children? Any of them could become a man of knowledge. All the men of knowledge I know were kids like those you saw eating leftovers and licking the tables.l5 Can this not be seen to relate to a subtle sub- theming (at least in this one book) dealing with '''values 11 ? But incredibly, this theme actually does continue as impor- tant throughout the entire series. In Journey to Ixtlan Don Juan calls Carlos a "pimp" for his anthropological work, implying Carlos was not working for his O"\\TD pleasure but merely pimping for the university. In Tales of Power when Don Juan has Carlos examining for comparison people in a park in City some of the most pathetic passersby are obviously "well-off" financially. The question is then, could one reverse the lineal- ity of this theme, traveling from the fourth book of the series through the first and all the way back to the source

15castaneda, A Separate Reality, p. 22. 18

of the works, the author, to continue to l~ok for clues to symbols of perspective and ? Has Carlos Castaneda, the author, become so integrated into his works "by inten­ tion" that we must disbelieve or, at least, closely scruti­ nize any and all in~ormation that he reveals to us? The answer, I feel is yes. What we will never know however, is whether or not the books are totally fictions or possibly only based on fact .. Carlos Castaneda is a sorcerer, whether or not he made up the ground rules and outlined the require­ ments himself. He is now required by his own invention to comply with the dictums of the system. He has gained mem­ bership in the world of sorcerers and his personal history is indeed his own. It is not since Conan Doyle perhaps, that an author has been so closely associated with his char­ acter. The difference is that there is no reluctance on the author's part, in this case, to disassociate himself from his invention. "Carlos" needs Castaneda, but Castaneda needs "Carlos" as well. And a combined personality emerges, a "Carlitos," a trickster that classically instructs as he fools his students, that lies yet speaks with a honeyed tongue, a teacher or 'benefactor' that has knowledge and secrets to share if only truth can be discerned from false­ hood. It is not remarkable then that when "Carlos," in

Journey to Ixtlan gains membership in the sorcerer's world 19 and acquires a spirit helper in animal form16 that the animal is a coyote, a creature in literature from many cultures as well as a series of Yaqui Myths that is known as "Trickster." "The only sad part," Don Juan tells Carlos after the latter narrates the 'extraordinary experience' of talking to a coyote on a hilltop and having the coyote talk back ". is that coyotes are not reliable. They are tricksters. It is your fate not to have a dependable animal companion. . If I were you, I would never trust a Coyote. But [he adds significantly] you are different and you may even become a coyote sorcerer." 17 Indeed it looks as though 'Carlos' has become a coyote sorcerer and Castaneda a coyote writer. He has set himself apart from his loved ones and has bewitched many a rea d er 1nto. a k"1n d o f d emon1c . a 11 eg1ence. to h"1s cause. 18 As an epigraph to the fourth book of the series, Castaneda quotes from "Dichos de Luz y .Amor," by San Juan de la Cruz, a sixteenth century Spanish priest. This poem lists the "conditions of a solitary bird," an actual species, but the verse takes on spiritual connotations for Juan.

16castaneda, A Separate Reality, p. 38. Definition of ally (spirit helper): "they are forces, neither good or bad, just forces that a brujo learns to harness." 17castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan, p. 254. 18DeMille, p. 13. Al Egori claims to possess a photograph of Don Juan but refuses to expose it to anyone. 20

The conditions of a solitary bird are ~ive The first that it flies to the highest point; The second, that it does not suffer for company, not even of its own kind; The third, that it aims its beak to the skies; The fourth, that it does not have a definite color; The fifth, that it sings very softly.

Carlos Castaneda has fulfilled these difficult conditions. He has made it so.

And now, even if Castaneda himself produced four more books proving that Don Juan could not possibly exist it really wouldn't matter. How could we believe him? The achievement is supreme and would be noteworthy even if the books were not extraordinary apart from their relationship with the writer. It is indeed the literary world's great fortune that this is not the case. Chapter 3

FOUR BOOKS, ONE STORY-­

THE STYLE OF PRESENTATION

In this section, I will discuss the style of presen-

tation that Carlos Castaneda chose for his tetralogy and

elaborate the contention that although each book can be

read as a single unit, they read best and are understood

most if considered as a single unit "in total." The phrase

"style of presentation" refers to the manner in which the

author chooses to relate his story.

First, let us summarize the main action and thrust

of the novels individually so that we might better under-

stand their relationship and connection and more easily

follow their conceptual flow.

The Teaching of Don Juan begins with a dedication

by the author for "Don Juan and those two persons who shared

his sense of magical time with me."1 Next is a forward by

Walter Goldschmidt which begins, "This book is poth ethnog-

raphy and allegory." Following this is an "acknowledge­ ments" page and finally an introduction by the author.

1 carlos Castaneda, The Teachings b£ Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (New York: Ballantine Books, 1969).

21 22 c

The introduction is rather lengthy (fourteen pages)

and attempts to establish an academic tone and disguise for

the narrator who is known simply as "Carlos." We are told

the details of Carlos' meeting with his informant Don Juan

Matus and the establishment of the teacher-apprentice link between these two, which, it is revealed, lasted for four years (1961-1964) and was broken off voluntarily by the apprentice. The book idea was not conceived until several months later. Of significance also is the narrator's belief that the "acquisition of an ally, meant exclusively the exploitation of states of non-ordinary reality he (Don Juan) 2 produced in me through the use of hallucinogenic plants."

The main body of the book is divided into two sec­ tions. The first section is labeled "The Teachings" and is composed of eleven chapters which are, in turn, dated by day of the week, month, date and year. There are a number of datings in each chapter which gives the first section the appearance and the reading pace of a journal. The first chapter introduces Don Juan and establishes the character of Carlos, the narrator, as a classic, cocky, naive academic who doesn't know as much about the world as he thinks he does. Don Juan, of course, is the wise old Indian who takes it upon himself for some unknown reason to teach Carlos

,about his shortcomings and about the mystery and beauty of

2 Ibid., p. 13. 23

the world. This, we are to assume, is something an academic

is not well versed in .. The bulk of the work follows Carlos,

a young U.C.L.A. anthropology student, as he learns the eso-

teric requirements of an apprentice sorcerer. The ''Teach-

ings'' end after Carlos has been subjected to a nightmarish

battle for his life against a female sorcerer and has

decided he must cease the lessons in order to maintain his

physical and mental safety. There is a brief afterword

which indicates in mildly definite terms that he (the

narrator) has given up his quest for Don Juan's esoteric

knowledge.

"That experience was the last of Don Juan's

teachings . . . ever since that time I have refrained from

seeking his lessons. And, although Don Juan has not changed

his benefactor's attitude toward me, I do believe that I 3 have succumbed to the first enemy of a man of knowledge."

The second section is entitled "A Structural

Analysis." It is a summary in outline form of the ideas

expressed in his teachings. "A structural scheme abstracted

·from the data on the states of non-ordinary reality pre-

sented in the foregoing parts of this book, conceived as an

attempt to disclose the internal cohesion and the cogency of Don Juan's teachings.'~

3 Ibid., p. 198. 4Ibid., p. 201. 24

The tone is extremely academic, even more than the "Teachings" section. The great difference between the two (aside from one being mainly summary and the other narrative-descriptive in nature) is the feeling of detach- ment and objectivity the narrator's "voice" seems to take on.

After the second section are two appendices.

Appendix A is calle.d "The Process of Validating Special

Consensus." Appendix B is an "Outline for Structural

Analysis" or an outline of the previous outline.

Three years later, in 1971, the second work of the

Castaneda series was published. This book, A Separate

Reality, Further Conversations With Don Juan, implied itself to be a continuation of the first book. Acknowledg- ing that the first book had reported an end to the "learn- ings," it was not an easy task to have a reader believe that the "teachings 11 would not end, regardless. The way around this little problem of being "too definite" on the narrator's part was for the author to come up with a slight retraction for the voice of the narrator. At the end of the introduction to A Separate Reality, Carlos writes:

At the time of my withdrawal I was convinced that my decision was final; I did not want to see Don Juan ever again. However, in April of 1968 an early copy of my book was made available to me and I felt compelled to show it to him. I paid him a visit. Our links of teacher-apprentice was mysteriously re-established, 25

and I can say that on that occasion I began a second cycle gf apprenticeship, very different from the first.

The cycle was not all that different but perhaps

more advanced. Don Juan was still the same old Indian but

he was more relaxed and seemed more sympathetic to Carlos'

plight. Drugs were still an important part of the teach­

ings, but there were some additional points 'of emphasis,

namely learning to "see" and learning to use the "will."

C~rlos was still the anthropologist; in fact, he

tells us that the reason the second cycle of teachings

began was that he was trying to accumulate evidence to

support his conclusion that "a skillful sorcerer could

bring forth the most specialized range of perception in his

apprentice by simply manipulating social cues."6 Much of

the book still deals with drug induced experiences, but, at

least, the intellectual trend was toward a more philosophi-

cal explanation for what Carlos experienced.

The book is separated again into two sections. The

first section is entitled "The Preliminaries of Seeing" and

the second "The Task of Seeing." Both sections are divided into numbered chapters and many of the chapters are dated,

although the dates appear within the text as opposed to

heading the text as in The Teachings of Don Juan.

5carlos Castaneda, A Separate Reality: Further Gon­ versatidns With Don Ju~n (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971), p.

6 Ib i d • , p • 2 4 • 26

There are a number of new characters, _most notably

Don Genaro who remains as an individual of great importance throughout the rest of the series. In addition there is a greater quantity of non-ordinary events that are produced without the aid of psychotropics and more emphasis is given to these events than in the past, although the narrator is still convinced that the use of drugs was "an indispensable pre-requisite" in the understanding of Don Juan's knowledge.

The book ends with an extraordinary non-drug, non­ ordinary event involving the sight of Don Genaro whisking his body to the top of some distant mountains then disap­ pearing. There is a white space7 and an end note conversa- tion between Don Juan and Carlos and a comment by the nar- rater that brings the story to a different kind of close.

My mind could no longer uphold my old ordinary criteria of what is real. However, all these specu­ lations I had thus far engendered about the nature of reality had been mere intellectual manipulations; the proof was that under the pressure of Don Juan and 8 Don Genaro's acts my mind had entered into an impasse.

Carlos is still the intellectual, but he is not

"certain" any longer.

Finally, there is a brief epilogue, an unusual tech- nical device in that it is not used again in any of the other three books. It is an extremely important literary

7 Ibid., p. 232. A new device for the series that is intToduced here. 8 !.bl- ·a__ .' p. 262 . 27 instrument for it "ends" this particular book but with a conclusion that lacks internal definitiveness. That is, technically an epilogue signals a finality, but, what is contained in this particular epilogue leaves some room for a progression.

Don Juan slowly walked around me. He seemed to be deliberating whether or not to say something to me. Twice he stopped and seemed to change his mind. "Whether or not you return is thoroughly unimpor­ tant," he finally said. "However, you now have the need to live like a warrior. You have always known that, now you are simply in the position of having to make use of something you disregarded before. But you had to struggle for this knowledge, it wasn't just given to you; it wasn't just handed down to you. You had to beat it out of yourself. Yet you're still a luminous being. You are still going to die like every­ one else. I once told you that there's nothing to change in a luminous egg." He was quiet for a moment. I knew he was looking at me, but I avoided his eyes. "Nothing has really changed in you," he said.9

CarJ.os has gained something, "Knowledge," but nothing has been given to him. He is different and "now needs to live like a warrior," but he hasn't changed, for he is and has always been a luminous being. So ends the further conversations with Don Juan.

Only one year later a book entitled A Journey to

Ixtlan subtitled The Lessons of Don Juan is published. It is obvious that that slight whisper that the previous book's epilogue was not a "true" ending has proved to be a shout"

The story here continues, but with a total change of empha­ sis and a dramatic development in writing style.

9 r bid. ' p. 2 6 3. 28

Jou~ney t6 I~tlan also begins with an introduction

and an academic justification for continuing the writings.

However, within this obligatory explanation of the anthro-

pological methods, there is a statement in no uncertain

terms that this book is somehow "different" from the pre-

vious two. Carlos admits that he has been as thick-headed

as everyone has been saying he was all along.

The effects of those psychotropics had been so bizarre and impressive that I was forced to assume that such states were the only avenue to communicating and learning what Don Juan was attempting to teach me ... that assumption was erroneous.lo

The tone is academic, but extremely "honest."

There seems to be a real desire on the narrator's part to

explain what he is doing and why. There are a number of

long passages that deal with complicated philosophical

propositions in a clear, concise manner and indeed lend

themselves, as in no previous book of the series, to a real

understanding of what it means to be and think as a sor-

cerer. Also, there is an acknowledgement by the narrator

that the conversations are at least partially influenced

by the author; " ... I gathered voluminous notes. In order

to render those notes readable and still the dra- matic unity of Don Juan's teachings, I had to edit them, but what I have deleted is, I believe, immaterial to the points

10 Carlos Castaneda, Jo·urney to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan (New York: Simon-anabefluster, I9'T2), p. vii. 29

I want to raise." Still the narrator contends that he is 11 letting Don Juan's words speak for themselves.

Also in the introduction, to further differentiate this book from the others, Carlos admits that the use of drugs was unnecessary in the comprehension of Don Juan's knowledge. He states, "It was simply my lack of sensitivity which had fostered their use."

The first half of this book, we are told is all the non-drug information which was discarded from previous field notes:

I discarded those parts of my field notes in my earlier notes because they did not pertain to the use of psychotropic plants. I have now rightfully rein­ stated them in the first seventeen chapters of this work. The last three chapters are the field notes coverinz the events culminating in my "stopping the world.".t2

And so, as with the last two books, Journey to

Ixtlan is divided into two sections. Part one is entitled

"Stopping the World" and part two "Journey to Ixtlan." Both sections are again divided into chapters, but in this case the chapters are titled as well. There is a mild attempt to contitiue the disguise of a journal for the work. Some chapters are dated within the text; others are headed by dates. There are some however that are not dated at all

11 Ihid.' p. xiv. 12 Ibi~.' p. xii. 30

and of these, three separate chapters follow the events of

the same day.

The main differences between this presentation and the previous two is that it is strongly implied that Carlos

"gains membership" or becomes a sorcerer during the course of the writing of this book. However, the text itself ends on a vague note and it appears obvious that a fourth book will soon appear;

"We are going to leave you here . . . do what you think is proper. The ally will be waiting for you at the edge of that plain." He pointed to a dark valley in the distance. "If you don't feel that it is your time yet, don't keep your appointment ... nothing is gained by forcing the issue. If you want to survive you must be crystal clear and deadly sure of yourself." Don Juan walked away without looking at me, but Don Genaro turned a couple of times and urged me with a wink and a movement of his head to go forward. I looked at them until they disappeared in the distance and then I walked to my car and drove away. I knew that it was not my time, yet.l3

Carlos was told in earlier teachings that he must wrestle with an ally or spirit helper and overpower it before he could rightfully call himself a sorcerer and claim membership. He tells us in the introduction to Ixtlan that he has gained membership but this book ends without his having tackled the ally. Therefore, in 1974, it was no sur­ prise, that the fourth book of the Don Juan series, Tales of Power was published. Carlos Castaneda received his

13 Ibid. , p. 2 6 8. 31 for the book, Journey to I:xt1an;14 and so in Tales of Po1-1er most of the pretense at being academic is dropped, and the result is that this book is by far the most "literary" of the four. There is no introduction as in .the first three books of the series. In contrast, at the begin- ning of The Tales of Power, we find a poem written by San Juan de la Cruz, from 'Dichos de luz Amor.' This time the book is divided into three sections and these sections are headed by chapter titles. There are few specific datings for the chapters. Chapter one establishes itself in time as "the autumn of 1971." Most of the other time references are to hour of day rather than day of week or even month of the year. Part one, entitled "A Witness to the Acts of Power" begins only a few months after Journey to Ixtlan leaves off. Don Genaro by this time is so much a part of the teachings that he seems an aspect of Don Juan's personality. In the first chapter, Carlos has an appointment with knowledge in the form of a moth. We later find out that the moth is the ally that he must tackle to meet the requirements of initiation. Part two is called "The Tonal and the Nagual" and the seven chapters contained in this section deal in some

14The book Jo~rney to Ixtlan is filed as Carlos Castaneda's dissertation under a different title, Sorcery: A Description of the World. The only difference is a two­ page introduction by Castaneda, to be found at the end of th1s thesis. 32 way with the explanation of clarification of these two 15 terms.

One of the greater scenic innovations in this sec- tion is that Carlos finds Don Juan in Mexico City dressed in a made-to-order suit rather than the poncho, khakis, and sandals we were accustomed to seeing him in. The "teach- ings" proceed in this populated setting until later chapters which bring us to part three, entitled "The Sorcerer's

Explanation," which contains four chapters of its own. This is a fascinating and possibly the most crucial section to be found in any of the four books. For here Carlos performs a number of the extraordinary feats that have been baffling him for the past thirteen years. And, although the story stretches the reader's imagination to the furthest limits, the sorcerer's explanation (the one we are given for all that's happening) makes a nearly successful attempt at making all that is described sound perfectly credible. We, as readers, are made to understand all that is happening in terms of a sorcerer's perception of the world. After thir- teen years and four novels, the reader is forced to accept

15 The term nagual corresponds to the Eastern phil­ osophy's nirvana or nothingness in that the nagual is the indescribable, the place where power hovers. Everything that has a name, or can be named is in the realm of the "tonal." That which cannot be named is the nagual. According to Don Juan, these two elements make up the tonality of our existence as human beings. 33

what he sees if viewed in this light. Human beings can dissolve themselves and turn into crows or crickets or coyotes or reappear in all their corporealness on other planets, but all this takes place in one's perception.

When Carlos asks Don Juan if a sorcerer could go to the moon, Juan replies, "Of course he can ... but he wouldn't 16 be able to bring back a bag of rocks though." That is one of the fourth bbok's great achievements; it puts all the other books of the series into the proper perspective, the sorcerer's perspective. And the other great accomplish- ment is making abstract ideas more concrete.

For years men have been discussing nirvana, the unknown, the indescribable. In Tales of Power Carlos describes how it's possible to release the binding force of life which holds those components together which make up an individual personality.

I again had the sensation of being tossed, spin­ ning, and falling down at a tremendous speed. Then I exploded. I disintegrated. Something in me gave out; it released something I had kept locked up all my life. I was thoroughly aware then that my secret reservoir had been tapped and that it poured out unrestrainedly. There was no longer the sweet unity I call "me." There was nothing and yet that nothing was filled. It was not light nor darkness, hot or cold, pleasant or unpleasant. It was not that I moved or floated or was stationary; neither was I a single unit, a self, as I am accustomed to being. I was a myriad of selves which were all "me" a colony of separate units that had a special allegiance to one another and would join unavoidably to form one single

16 carlos Castaneda, Tales of Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), p. 270. 34

awareness, my human awareness. It was not that I "knew·" beyond a shadow of a doubt, because there was nothing I could have "known" with, but, all my single aw·areness "knew" that the "I~" the "me," of my famil­ iar world was a colony, a conglomerate of separate and independent feelings that had an unbending solidarity to one another. The unbending solidarity of my count­ less awarenesses, the allegiance that those parts had for one another was my life force.l7

The book's ending is almost an extended metaphor

for the technique Carlos Castaneda has employed for four novels to entice the reader to purchase the next book of

the series. It is a "cliff hanger," literally. For the

book closes on a cliff top as Carlos and Pablito (another

apprentice) bound without Don Juan or Genaro's aid over the precipice and into the lonely and mysterious world of

sorcerers.

Don Juan and Don Genaro stepped back and seemed to merge with the darkness. Pablito held my forearm and we said goodby to each other. Then a strange urge, a force, made me run with him to the northern edge of the mesa. I felt his arm holding me as we jumped and then I was alone.l8

The reader is left to assume that Carlos has indeed

"gained membership" and that this self propelled flight

over the precipice turned out all right. Obviously "Carlos"

survived at least long enough to narrate this book for

"Castaneda." And the door is being left open purposefully

for the fifth book in the series. Many have maintained that if "Carlos" or "Castaneda" or both have indeed reached

17 Ibid., p. 162. 18Tb. ~ ~., p. 287. 35 this transcendental level of understanding and have divorced

themselves totally from the petty world of man that a fifth book is impossible. Indeed many wonder how Carlos could write Tales of Power after jumping from that cliff as we. are told in that final chapter. I believe however if one looks to the texts and follows the trends of development, not only in the writing style, but in the teachings them­ selves, it becomes clear that a fifth book is indeed a necessity.

As we have seen, even from these brief descriptions, the pattern of development has been very subtle. Any one of the books could be read alone and enjoyed. In fact, some say that Carlos simply retold his story in the first three books, changing emphasis slightly as the years pro­ gressed. And, after he got his Doctoral degree, he wrote

Tales of Power totally as an allegorical slap in the face to all his detractors and admirers alike. I do not believe that this is the case. Certainly "Carlos" is a coyote sorcerer and a trickster, but he is still basing his story on a series of age-old truths. The teachings consist mainly of four issues. Carlos learns what it means to be a "sor­ cerer" for one, but he also learns what it means to be "a man of knowledge" and a "warrior" and also a "hunter." And each of these conditions--as the story progresses--becomes more strongly rooted in the other conditions. A warrior for instance must first be a hunter. And a sorcerer must be a 36

lvarrior. And a man of knowledge must be able· to see the

lvorld from more than one perspective, and the "other" per-

spective we learn, along with Carlos, is the only "other"

one that our teacher, Don Juan, knows the perspective of

sorcery.

Another important, even vital, bit of developmental

information is that a man of knowledge has a "predilection."

In Separate Reality Carlos asks Don Juan to explain this

concept:

"I said that a man of knowledge has his own predi­ lection; mine is just to 'see' and to know; others do other things." "What other things for example?" "Take Sacateca, he's a man of knowledge and his predilection is dancing. So he dances and knows." "Is the predilection of a man of knowledge some­ thing he does in order to know?" "Yes, that is correct."l9

From the very beginning we are given clues that

Carlos indeed has a predilection ~s well, and his predilec-

tion is writing. On the very first day of apprenticeship

Don Juan calls attention to Carlos' incessant writing.

11What are you doing in your pocket? Are you playing with your whanger?''ZO Carlos was taking notes inside the

pocket of his windbreaker so he would not disturb Don Juan.

Both Juan and Genaro are constantly clowning about

Carlos trying to learn sorcery by writing everything down.

19 Castaneda, A Sepa~ate Reality, p. 11. 20 Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan, p. 5. 37

In Separate Reality, Genaro sits on his head j~ a figurative gesture to point out the absurdity of Carlos' constant note

taking. But Don Juan points out, "it doesn't matter .

if you ever learn to 'see.' I suppose you must do it your mvn weird way.n 21 On a number of occasions in later

sequences Genaro and Juan actually make sure that Carlos has his writing gear before they will say or do anything

~ith him. In the last ch~pter of Ta1es of Power, Carlos

\Hites: Don Juan handed me my writing pad, but I did not feel like taking notes. We sat in a half circle with Don Juan and Don Genaro at the ends. "You started on the path of knowledge writing, and you will finish the same way," Don Juan said. All of them ~rged me to write, as if my writing were essential. 2

Earlier in this book, Don Juan even calls Carlos' ability

to take notP-s without concentrating an "act of sorcery."

And there is one point at which Juan actually mentions writing as the predilection of his apprentice.

Speculating about the amount of "creativity," in

this chapter) "The Role of Carlos, Carlitos, and Castaneda the Author11 the great question that arises from all of this

is, why did Carlos Castaneda "choose" this particular style of presentation? Why did he write four books instead of

just one? One possible answer is that the whole thing is a truthful account of an actual apprenticeship. If that were

21 Castaneda, A Separate Reality:_, p. 215. 22 castaneda, Tales of Power, p. 275. 38

the case, it would explain why Carlos knew as little about his subject as he said he did and why there were constantly new qualifications to previous teachings.

Some of Castaneda's detractors have rejected this

possibility entirely and even suggest that the four books were planned as a series from the beginning. Richard

DeMille suggests that the dedication in book one, "For Don

Juan and those two persons who shared his sense of magical

time with me" is actually a dedication to Juan, Genaro, and

Pablito. Two of these people are not introduced until book two and in book one there are no other characters of impor­

tance (besides Juan and Carlos) except for La Catalina, and

it is most unlikely that she would be one of those "other

two" since she allegedly tried to kill Carlos. Also, this whole idea seems remarkable on one level since DeMille

spends most of his time in his own book "proving" that none of these three people even exist. On another level, it seems perfectly feasible however. Castaneda, it was shown

earlier, is not reluctant to alter dates and juggle history a bit. It could be that many of the events that were recorded in later books actually took place even before the writing of book one in the series.

Any good sorcerer and warrior who is living out his predilection for writing and is trying to live impeccably in the academic world of university students might conceive the idea of writing down some of his apprenticeship in 39

dissertation form to accomplish the magical feat of .con~ juring up a Ph.D. It certainly does not appear that

Castaneda was trying for a best seller with the first book~ The Teachings is too final and too separate from the rest of the series. The writing is too dry and the structural analysis which takes up the entire second half of the book hardly makes for enjoyable bedtime reading. Also, one usually does not publish at a university press if shooting for sales of a million. Then who are those "other two" of the dedication? I do not feel that it would be too diffi­ cult to accept that the dedication was made out of simple, courteous respect for "any" two individuals who may have assisted Carlos (in a myriad of possible ways) while he was conducting initial interviews. Within the text, it is made clear that Carlos did not stay with Don Juan the whole time he was making the original commitments to the arduous life of a warrior and sorcerer's apprentice. Many of the chap­ ters of the first three books begin and end with Carlos coming from or going to a number of unspecified places. Was Carlos being shifty or evasive by not being specific about his activities when he was not in the company of Don Juan, or did he feel that these activities simply did not pertain to the subject at hand? That is the question only Carlos could answer and I don't see why he would bother at this point. If indeed the dedication was made to two friends other than Pablito or Genaro, two likely candidates 40

would probably be those mentioned in the introduction to The Teachings of Don Juan: I was driving at night in the company of two Indian friends when I saw an animal that seemed to be a dog crossing the highway ... talking excitedly, my friends agreed that it was a very unusual animal, 23 and one of them suggested that it might be a diablero. The reasons that I feel that these two friends are the ones of the dedication deal with a purely subjective observation that these are the only two friends who are not named in some way and are also the only two that Carlos mentions as being with him in any other capacity as "informants." The possibility will always remain that the books were fictional constructions from the outset, in which case, Car:os Castaneda must be admired for his courage to attempt such a hoax to merely circumvent the system and obtain a Ph.D. degree. It would certainly have been simpler and surer to have done what he said he had set out to do and write a scholarly "paper" on medicinal herbs. Arid if he was planning the endeavor as a financial scheme one must admire his foresight in predicting how the public would respond to a book published in a limited.edition by a uni- versity press, and in predicting too that the response would not be totally negative to the second and third books of the

23castaneda, Teachings of Don Juan, p. 3. 41

series which contained retractions of main issues of the previous books.

My conclusion, therefore, is that the books were not "planned" from the beginning as a tetralogy. It is more likely that the books were left open-ended because they were factual accounts. But it could be that Castaneda, from a literary-financial perspective realized that he'd made a tactical error in The Teachings of Don Juan when he vowed there would be no more writing about his apprentice- ship. The following books were always "complete." But the reader always knew that as long as Carlos did not actually function in the world of sorcerers a~ a sorcerer, there would continue to be a story to be told. Now that he has allegedly "gained membership" the question still remains, will readers be as enthralled by the doings of a full­ fledged sorcerer as they were by the bumbling apprentice?

We will have a short wait for our answer, for book five is destined to appear sometime near the beginning of 24 1978. But as long as Carlos Castaneda lives, I believe there will be a story to tell and one that will capture the reader. And I think "someone" was trying to give the reader some insight of this account at the end of Tales of Power with these words:

24Research for this thesis was completed before The Second Ring of Power was published, making this comment somewhat dated. 42

I '

At this point a teacher would usually say to his disciple that they have arrived at a final cross road ... to say such a thing is misleading though. In my opinion, there is no final cross road, no final step to anything. And since there is no final step to anything, there shouldn't be any secrecy about any part of our lot as luminous beings.25

If this teaching was believed by Carlos and he follows the path of his predilection, there should be no final cross roads for him and no final books.

25castaneda, Tales of Power, p. 227. Chapter 4

TRACING PERSONAL HISTORY: CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS

''What. did you call your father," I asked. "J called him Dad," he said with a very serious face. "What did you call your mother," I asked. 1 "I called her mom, II he replied in a naive tone. Let us now begin to sort out the pertinent biograph­ ical information about his main characters that can be obtained from the Castaneda texts. We will be tracing their personal histories and applying what we learn to their. development as characters in the story. The body of thi~ section will treat the most important characters most fully and the characters of lesser importance according to their. varying degrees of impact, not only on the other

~haracters, but on the reader as well. Therefore, the

~haracters of Don Juan Matus and Don Genaro will be dealt with in depth while other characters may be only mentioned or ignored entirely. The epigraph quoted above, from Journey to Ixt1an, points out the difficulty one encounters when trying to piece together a biographical chart for the illusive old

lcarlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixt1an: The Lessons ~f Don Juan (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), p. 10.

43 44

Indian. Don Juan, simply did not have too much to say about his personal history, even when Carlos was interested. "I don't have personal history anymore," he told the inquis­ itive anthropologist. "I dropped it one day when I felt. it was no longer necessary." The erasure of one's past life, in fact, was an important condition for acquiring an understanding of Don Juan's knowledge. And later, when Don Juan became more amenable about relinquishing historical data, Carlos too had acquired a love for the mysterious and stopped his old mentor from revealing those little bits of history that every reader longed to know. "I did not want Don Juan to tell me about himself. He paused as if he had read my mind. 112 At times it almost appears as if Carlos and Juan are conspiTing to conceal important facts; luckily, however, both have moments of human weakness and make mistakes. The facts that leak out here and there can be, and are here, organized into a brief sketch of Don Juan's personal his­ tory. Don Juan was born in the "Southwest" of the North American continent in 1891. He spent nearly all of his life in Mexico. In 1900 his family was exiled by the Mexican government to Central Mexico along with thousands of other Sonoran Indians .. He lived in Central and Southern

2 Ibid., p. 267. 45

Mexico until 1940, 3 when he moved to Arizoria. Sometime during the middle or late 1960's, Juan Matus moved his residence back to Mexico. We know only that his home was somewhere in the state of , along the Pan-American. highway4 in an area that was a few days walk from both a volcanic mountain range 5 and the U.S. border. When he was seven years old, his mother was killed during the Yaqui wars with the Mexican government. He watched the event. What I remember the most is the terror and sadness that fell upon me when the Mexican soldiers killed my mother ... she was a poor and humble Indian. Per­ haps it was better that her life was over then. I wanted to be killed with her, because I was a child. But the soldiers picked me up and beat me. When I grabbed onto my mother's body, they hit my fingers with a horsewhip and broke them. I didn't feel any pain, but I couldn't grasp anymore, and then they dragged me away.6 Later his father also died from wounds received in this battle. Juan survived on his own by shining shoes and eating scraps off tables at restaurants. Later he sold medicinal herbs in the marketplace in Oaxaca with his friend

3castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (New You:-Ballantine Books, Inc., 1969), p. 96. 4castaneda, JouTn~y to Ixtlan, p. 140. 5Ihid., p. 201 6castaneda, A Separate Reality: Further Conversa­ tions with Don Juan "[New York: Simon and Schuster, 197T), p. 136. 46

Don Vicente Medrano. When he was in his late-20's or early

30's, he "killed a man with a single blow of his arm. 117 A short time before he met Carlos, Juan had acquired a repu- 8 tat ion for drinking a great dea1 but the evidence in the books suggests that if he did drink alcohol, he has now given it up completely. There is even evidence that he will not drink now even if alcohol is offered to him:

I passed the bottle and everyone poured himself a small drink, everyone except Don Juan; he just took the bottle and placed it in front of Lucio, who was at the end of the line.9

Lucio is Juan's one living grandson, the offspring of Eulalia, Juan's son. Eulalia died as a young man and

Don Juan was witness to this death too:

Take my son Eulalia . . . he was crushed by rocks while working in the construction of the Pan-American highway ... when I carne to the blasting area he was almost dead, but his body 1vas so strong that it kept moving and kicking . . never again would I look at his fine figure pacing the earth.10

There is no mention in the books of a wife for Juan or of her death. The only other living relative that he has, or Carlos has written about, is his daughter-in-law 11 who takes care of him when he dislocates his ankle.

7 Castaneda, The Teachi?gs__ of Don Juan, p. 96.

8castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan, pp. 7-8.

9castaneda, A Separate Reality, p. 59. 10 Ibid., p. 90. 11 castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan, p. 61. 47

Don Juan apparently lived for many years as a respected Brujo and member of a Yaqui community, but has since disassociated himself from his kind, to the injury of his reputation. "He was a real sorcerer once," Benigno added. "I mean a real one. My folks say he was the best. But he took to and became a nobody."12 Juan still, however, is a character that has earned apparently some kind of respect, although he no longer per~ forms any cultural function as a curer. Bill, the character who introduced Don Juan and Carlos, mentions a kind of reverence the Indians of Juan's area give to him. "The Indians around here know him, yet they never mention him. And that's something."13 Carlos talks about an early search for the "eccentric Mexican Indian's" house and the feeling that the Indians whom they had asked for directions had deliberately misled them. After giving up the life of yerbero (or herb seller) and curer, Juan apparently has supported himself at least partly, with the returns from some undefined financial stock. 14 This summary-biography includes most of what we know about Don Juan's personal history. Everything else

12castaneda, A Separate Reality, p. 69. 13 rb id . ' p . 3 . 14castaneda, Tales of Fower (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), p. 162. 48

one must surmise purely from what is implied as fact. For instance, Juan Matus possibly could possess some kind of formal education, for we know him to speak "flawless Spanish." As a stockholder, we know he prefers to dress in tailored-to-order suits and we must assume that his business is important enough to him to move to Mexico City from Sonora for, at least, short periods of time to accomplish business tasks. It is likely too, knowing Juan's love for achieving impeccability at all social levels, that he has another residence in Mexico City quite unlike the one described in Separate Realit~15 a wattle-and-daub~ thatched­ roofed hut of one room with bundles of herbs and strangely contorted, dry medicinal roots hanging from the walls and a single kerosene lantern hanging from a wooden beam. It is easy to see the familiar khaki and poncho attired Juan in such a setting, but we can only assume he is housed otherwise when dressed in his three-piece suits. In fact, it is strange just how easy to picture he is for the reader, for there are almost no real descriptions of his figure for us. We see him only as ''a white-haired old Indian" in Teachings of Don Juan who "though his dark face and neck were wrinkled, showing his age . . . his body was 16 agile and muscular. n In Separate R~-~ the first

15 castaneda, A Separate Reality, p. 189. 16castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan, p. 1 49 meeting is again described and Don Juan's figure is fleshed out just a bit more.

The Indian was of medium height. His hair was white and short, and grew a bit over his ears, accen­ tuating the roundness of his head. He was very dark; the deep wrinkles on his face gave him the appearance of age, yet his body seemed to be strong and fit. I watched him for a moment. He moved around with a nimbleness that I would have thought impossible for an old man.l7

Don Juan does not fit the stereotypical view of the elderly, however. He was', according to the dates given in the Castaneda text, more than 77 years old when we first met him in the Teachings of Don Juan. Simple computation reveals his age at close to 90 in Tales of Power, and what is remarkable is how little Juan changes in all the time we know him. In fact, he is probably one of the most consis- tent characters in the Castaneda tetralogy, if not in all literature. Thirteen years passed, but he never gets any older, or less strong. Carlos gains and loses weight. He matures and his writing style develops, but Juan's narrative oratorical style never alters. He is consistent in tone, voice and dramatic style. This is not to say that he is monotonous. Far from it. From the beginning we never know what to expect from him, in act or word. Juan is predic- tably unpredictable. Carlos comments on the possible reasons for his teacher's bizarre behavior.

17 Castane d a, A Separate Reality,. pp. 1 - 2 . so

As a rule, he always concluded each of our sessions on an abrupt note; thus the dramatic tone of the ending tone of each chapter is not a literary device of my own, it was a device proper of Don Juan's oral tradi­ tion. It seemed to be a mnemonic device that helped me to retain the dramatic quality and importance of the lessons.l8 Of course, also, to be unpredictable or "without routines" was a condition that a warrior and sorcerer needed to fulfill. Juan fulfills this condition particularly well. He is continually popping. up when he is least expected. Here are two representative passages: "Hello, hello! Look who's here!" someone said, tapping me lightly on the shoulder. The voice and the touch made me jump. I quickly turned to my right. My mouth opened in surprise. The person who had spoken to me was Don Juan. "'My , Don Juan!" I exclaimed and a shiver shook · my body from head to toe. "What are you doing here?"l9 I parked my car and walked a short distance to the house. To my surprise, l found :nim there. "Don Juan! I didn't expect to find you here," I said.20 Don Juan does show some human qualities, weaknesses that he calls "his own peculiar way of indulging." The greatest example of Don Juan's indulgence is when he is sad. One of the things that seems to make him sad is the plight of the Indians. "We Indians have nothing," Don Juan tells Carlos in Separate Reality. "All you see around here

18 lh i d . ' p . 8 • 19castaneda, Tales of Power, p~ 105. 20Thid., p. 11. 51:

21 belongs to the Yoris. The have only their wrath

and what the land offers to them freely."

Another source of sadness for Juan is the sadness

that all sorcerers must feel as individuals who have sepa­

rated themselves from their pasts, their homes and their

feelings as men. Don Genaro discusses his metaphorical

striving to regain his past has his "Journey to·Ixtlan,"

the place of his home.

"I will never reach Ixtlan," he said. His voice firm but soft, almost a murmur. "Yet in my feelings . . . sometimes I think I am just one step from reaching it. Yet I never will. In my journey I don't even find the familiar landmarks I used to know. Nothing is any longer the same." Don Juan and Don Genaro looked at each other. There was something so sad about their look. "In my journey to Ixtlan I find only travelers," he said softly.22

Juan realizes his sadness and the sources of it, yet to be an impeccable warrior does not mean that he cannot have human feelings but only that he cannot let these feelings govern him by becoming obsessions: "Don Juan was right

again when he said that a warrior could not avoid pain and 23 grief, but only the indulging in them." Human emotion indeed is an important enough part of

being a warrior that in the outline for the system of beliefs which govern the condition an antidote for the

Zly.... ~l~, an Indian term meaning "Mexican." 22 castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan, p. 264.

23castaneda, Tales 6f Power, p. 281. 52 loneliness that could result from this self-imposed

"aloneness" is integrated into the system:

Only if one loves this earth with unbending passion can one release one's sadness ... a warrior is always joyful because hiS love is unal­ terable and his beloved, the earth, embraces him and bestows upon him inconceivable gifts. The sadness belongs only to those who hate the very thing that gives shelter to their beings ... this lovely being, which is alive to its last recesses and under­ stands every feeling, soothed me, it cured me of my pains, and finally when I had fully understood my love for it, it taught me freedom ... without an unwavering love for the being that gives you shelter, aloneness is loneliness.24 ·

The final aspect of Don Juan's character that I wish to deal with here is his sense of humor. Carlos tries to convince the reader that Don Juan "develops" a more fre- quent use of humor as the series progresses. In the second book, A Separate Reality, he writes of the initiation of the second cycle of apprenticeship as being "very different from the first."

The total mood of Don Juan's teachings was more relaxed. He laughed and also made me laugh a great deal. There seemed to be a deliberate intent on his part to minimize seriousness in general. He clowned during the truly crucial moments of this second cycle, and thus helped me to overcome experiences which could easily have become obsessive. His premise was that a light and amenable disposition was needed in order to withstand the impact and the strangeness of the knowl­ edge he was teaching me.25

Whatever Don Juan's reasons for his use of humor and lightness to establish the teachings, they are not

24-b"d ~-, p. 286. 25castaneda, A Separate Reality, p. 7. 53

"the new development" that the above statement implies. It is true, perhaps, that Don Juan is more serious and force- fully didactic in the first book than the second; however, if we take Castaneda's chronology as valid, then the inci- dents in the first half of the third book must be taken into account. Don Juan therefore emerges as consistent as ever.

As I have already pointed out in chapter two, on the very first day of the apprenti~eship he inquired about Carlos' taking notes on a small pad in the pocket of his wind­ breaker, "What are you doing in your pocket? Are you 26 playing with your whanger?"

The sequence just before this is a twist on an old story that Don Juan constructs for Carlos to show him how preposterous his preparations have been for their meeting:

I had heard the theme of the story before. It had to do with Jews in Germany and the way one could tell who was a Jew by the way they pronounced certain words. I also knew the punch-line: The young man was going to get caught because the official had forgotten the key word and had asked him how to pronounce another word which was very similar but which the young man had not learned to say correctly. Don Juan seemed to be wait­ ing for me to ask what happened, so I did. "What happened to him?" I asked, trying to sound naive and interested in the story. "The young man, who was truly foxy ... realized that the official had forgotten the key word, and before the man could say anything else he confessed that he had prepared himself for six months." ... this time he had turned the tables on me. The young man's confession was a new element and I no longer

26 castaneda, Journey to Ixt1an, p. 5. 54

knew how the story would end. "Well, what happened then?" I asked, truly interested. "The young man was killed instantly, of course," he said and broke into a roaring laughter.27

The way Don Juan changes the story and entraps

Carlos' interest is reminiscent of Feste's wordplay with

Olivia in Twelfth Night, or any of a number of exchanges between Lear's Fool and the king. Shakespeare, .indeed knew the value of the "fool" as a tool for biting commentary and as a mouthpiece for wisdom as well as humor. Castaneda seems to draw the character of his brujo from the same stock.

Historically comedians have been dealt with as divine or magical characters and Carl Jung went so far as to outline similarities between the clown and shamans.

It js at this point that we should turn our atten- tion to the discussion of Don Genaro as a character in

Castaneda's tetralogy, for it is around him that the inci­ dents, both most frightening and most hilarious seem to revolve.

Don Genaro's appearance in Separate Re~lity came just under halfway through this novel and with him an ele- ment in the series which could be described as "pure magic. 11

He was a character kept in reserve by the author for the special or transcendental occasion. He was very Don-Juanian

27 Ihid., p. 4. 55

1n some respects, but he seemed to epitomize certain char"

acteristics almost as Hyde was made to epitomize certain of the evil characteristics of Dr. Jekyl.

To get a picture of Juan's and Genaro's similar-

ities and differences and the way they play off one another

in the text, I will here do for Genaro what I did for Juan at the beginning of this chapter and gather together what we know about him in the £orm of a brief semi-biography.

Don Genaro appeared in ch~pter six of a Separate

R ea 1 1ty. 28 as an even more myster1ous. c h aracter t h an Don

Juan Matus; for he was simply a first name and remained as such throughout the rest of the series, in spite of the fact that his importance to and direct involvement with

Carlos' indoctrination mushrooms wit~ each new encounter.

From the beginning, the literary treatment of Genaro is different from that of the other sorcerers. We are told, for instance, that Carlos had "already made his acquain- tance, although very briefly" but that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Carlos goes so far as to say that

"I had not really looked at him at that time, except in a 29 glancing fashion." Genaro is presented as a sorcerer from the beginning and what makes this lackluster first encounter remarkable is the fact that ~11 of the sorcerers that Carlos had met up to this time were, at least, impetus 28 Castaneda, A Separate Reality, p. 92. 29 Ibid., p. 92. 56 for an experience that was ''non-ordinary." When Car,los met . 30 Sacateca he experienced a feeling of faintness or numbness when Sacateca tapped his toe behind his heel in a fashion · that Don Juan called "a dance." When Carlos dropped in on

Don V1cente. 31 h e was g1ven . some ,, power p 1 ants ,,3 2 an d encountered his allies.

Carlos' first meeting with Don Genaro is so unre- rnarkable that we as readers hear of it only as an after­ thought. And then, in the next sentence there is another strange development. Genaro is described:

. . . I had had the feeling he was as old as Don Juan. As he stood at the door of his house, however, I noticed that he was definitely younger. He was perhaps in his early 60's. He was shorter than Don Juan and slimmer, very dark and wiry. His hair was thick and graying and a bit long; it ran over his ears and forehead. His face was round and hard. A very prominent nose made him look like a bird of prey with small dark eyes.33

We do not know Genaro's age with any more exacti- tude than Carlos' conjecture. We know only that he lives in Central Mexico, that his horne was once in Ixtlan, and that he calls himself a member of the Mazatec tribe. We can locate his home roughly from a statement made in Tales of

30 castaneda, A Separate Reality, p. 14. 31 __I·b··1_.' d pp. 30-34. 32 Power plants, a term usually applied to plants with hallucinogenic properties, but refers in general to any plant used to benefit a sorcerer.

33castaneda, A Separate Reality, p. 93_. 57

Power, 34 but our calculations will leave us in the midst of several Mexican states. At least with Don Juan we know he is in Sonora. With Genaro we can only guess--and with no more information than is given one must truly be a sorcerer to "see" the locality of his home correctly. Genaro's similarities to a clown are apparent from the beginning. His laughter is so continuous, however, that there is no need for a painted-on smile. When he greets Carlos at his home, "His words were a polite formula I had heard before in various rural areas of Mexico. Yet as he said the words he laughed joyously for no overt reason." From here on it is almost one continuous circus of laughs for Genaro. He laughs at Carlos' writing and laughs at Carlos' fear of death, then he "sits" on his head, without the aid of his arms or hands to the utter bewilderment of Carlos and again laughs at Carlos because Carlos is bewildered. Genaro, in the midst of his laughter, is not just a clown. He is merely a light-hearted version of Don Juan. Juan is occasionally light; Genaro is occasionally serious.

Juan talks endlessly to his pupil; Genaro's predile~tion is not to talk but to act. Don Juan very seriously tells Carlos to be careful when listening to Genaro because "although what he says is funny it is not a joke."

34castaneda, Tale~ ~f Po~er, p. 282. 58

Don Genaro gave a description of what-he called

"the arrangement of the other world" and how a teacher could show each layer of the world to his students.

You start at the very bottom and then your teacher takes you with him in his flight and soon, boom! You go through the first layer, then a little while later, boom! You go through the second; and boom! You go through the third .... 35

This is the first time that Genaro has spoken at any length and Carlos' a~d Juan's reactions to this out- burst are made obvious and immediate.

Don Genaro took me through ten booms to the last layer of the world. When he had finished talking Don Juan looked at me and smiled knowingly. "Talking is not Genaro's predilection ... but if you care to get a lesson, he will teach you about the equilibrium of things." Don Genaro nodded affirmatively; he puckered up his mouth and closed his eyelids half-way. I thought his gesture was delightful.36

Don Juan's statement, Genaro's gesture, and Carlos' over-reaction to these simple movements are symbolic of the relation of the three for the rest of the series.

Juan is the voice of the philosophies and tech- niques; Genaro is the body. Carlos 1 tonal responds to Juan and his nagual responds to Genaro. From the moment Genaro takes Carlos clumsily through the ten layers of the world, his speeches become fewer but his acts become greater, both in number and impact. The lesson on the "equilibrium of things" is, without a doubt, the most intriguing, dramatic

35 castaneda, A Separate Reality, p. 99. 36 Ibid., p. 99 59 and descriptive scene in the second book. Genaro takes

Carlos (and his own two apprentices, Nestor and Pablito) to the bottom of a waterfall. The description of the terrain is one of the best literal scenic descriptions that we have had up to this point:

Directly above us there was a huge, dark, bluish cloud that looked like a floating roof; it had a well defined edge and was shaped like an enormous half­ circle. To the west, on the high mountains of the Cordillera Central, the rain seemed to be descending on the slopes. It looked like a whitish curtain falling on the green peaks. To the east there was the long, deep valley; there were only scattered clouds over the valley and the sun was shining there. The contrast between these two areas was magnificent.37

Even with the seeming "impersonal" description of the area Castaneda seems to be establishing contrasts between dark and light, storm and calm and perhaps Genaro and Juan. Without a word Genaro proceeds to climb the sheer side of the waterfall-cliff and performs a series of remarkable acrobatics on the cliff face.

He threw his arms up suddenly, lifted his head, and flipped his body swiftly in a sort of lateral somersault to his left. The boulder where he had been standing was round and when he jumped he dis­ appeared behind it.38

Later it is Juan, not Genaro who explains the feat.

Genaro's powers affect Carlos' body in ways that defy physics. Certainly Don Juan has baffled his pupil with acts of telepathy and clairvoyance, but it is Genaro

37 Ihid.' P'· 99. 38 Ibid., p. 99. 60 whose gentle touch is able to cause physical agony in the narrator, and whose childish antics can cause Carlos to react with uncontrollable fear.

He began to move backwards, jumping on his seat, and went all the way to the end of the ramada and back . . . the sight of Don Genaro leaping backwards on his buttocks, instead of being funny as it should have been, threw me into an attack of fear so intense that Don Juan had to strike me repeatedly on the top of my head with his knuckles.39

By the fourth book, the symbols for the Genaro-Juan split are more frequent and obviobs. When Carlos asks

Genaro a question Don Juan answers. "I asked Don Genaro what a double did, or what a sorcerer did with the double. 40 Don Juan answered."

When Juan speaks into Carlos' right ear, Genaro 41 speaks simultaneously into his left. The following quo- tation leaves little room for speculation. The narrator

Carlos is not implying the closeness of the two characters any longer. He is telling us straight out.

"Don Juan and Don Genaro stopped and turned in unison; their eyes moved and focused on me with such uni- formity and precision that they seemed to be one single 42 person."

39 castaneda, Tales of Power, p. 55. 40 Ibid. ' p. 52. 41 ~-,r·b·· d p. 183. 42 Ibid., pp. 274-275. 61

Carlos may be trying to tell us also that Juan and

Genaro are like traits in a personality; they get mixed up occasionally or at times one trait becomes dominant over the others, but in the final analysis there is always the allegiance that one personality trait has to the other.

Perhaps all sorcerers are unified in some way as with this realization of Carlos' in Tal~s of Power.

They were both su~h a strange unnerving mixture of Don Genaro and Don Juan ... I knew that Pablito and Nestor were using Don Genaro and Don Juan as models for behavior. I myself had found that I also was behaving more and more like them.43

And perhaps this unification could even relate back to the sequence in the later pages of Tales of Power where

Carlos sees himself as a countless number of personality traits or "nuggets of awareness" that have an unbending solidarity for one another that is life itself.

One final bit of evidence for the case of the

"parts making up the whole" is the relationship that "La

Catalina, 11 the only significant female character thus far in the entire series, has with the rest of the character~.

La Catalina, aside from being a source for a balance of masculine-feminine traits is a character worthy of note in that she is the only character, besides Juan and Carlos, discussed in all four of the books. She is the source of terror for Carlos, but also stirs emotions that the other

43 castaneda, Tales of Power, p. 216. 62

main ~haracters cannot. These emotions deal with the male­ female attractions of sexuality. "I scrutinized her care­ fully and concluded that she was a beautiful woman. 1144

Carlos' encounters with her could even be deciphered as symbolic of the sexual act. His descriptions are imag­ istic, sensual; th~y deal with the senses, and at one point when he says he "was so close to her that I felt her clothes on my face" he takes a wild boar fore-leg and thrusts it 45 "into her belly," as he is directed by Don Juan.

Later we find out that Carlos could not have really hurt the sorceress, because she was too powerful, that she did not really want to kill him but was a friend of Don

Juan's and was trying to help in the teachings, and that

Genaro, not .TPan is really Carlos' benefactor. It is one big sorcerer family, or sorcerer body. One trait becom~s more important at times than others, but they are all united by the force called "the designs of power."

As tools for Castaneda, Genaro, Catalina and Juan all serve useful purposes. Our debt to Juan of course is greatest. Whether the books be fact or fiction or a combi­ nation of the two, we must be aware how fortunate Castaneda was to find a Don Juan to speak the philosophies and to have characters like Genaro and Catalina to portray what

44castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan, p. 217.

45castaneda, A Separate Reality, p. 210. 63 ( is spoken. If Carlos Castaneda had presented the ideas of these books as his own, with his own "voice" how few would have heard? Indeed, how few would have even listened? I . must agree with Ronald Sukenich when he answers Joyce Carol Oates on the question of the books being works of art; "Ms. Oates, to answer your questions directly, these books are ' 46 works of art, but works of art don't have to be novels."

46 Ronald Sukenich, "Upward and Juanward: The Possi­ ble Dream," in Daniel Noel, Seeing Castaneda: Reactions to Don Juan, Writings of Carlos Castaneda (New York: Capricorn Books, 1976), pp. ll0-120. Chapter 5

FROM PLATO TO JUANCHO

The philosophical viewpoints expressed in the four Castaneda volumes are intricate and complete enough that a thesis could easily be written from this single perspective. In this chapter, I will touch upon a few possible literary and philosophical precursors for what is expounded. An over-riding concept in the sorcerer's teachings is the concept of "seeing" as opposed to "looking." When looking, an individual experiences the things of the world, usually with his eyes, according to his preconceptions of the reality of those things. When an individual "sees," however, he experiences the world with his whole being, including the usual physical senses and some undefined sensory receptor that is called "the will." When one "sees," therefore, one experiences the things of the world more fully and directly than if one is simply looking at those things. The result is that one experiences the "true reality" as opposed to simply the reality of social con­ sensus.

This concept has a philosophical for~runner, perhaps, in a view expressed by Plato with his "universal forms." For Plato, in addition to every spatia-temporal

64 65

entity there was also a "form" or non-spatial, non-temporal

and non-perceptible entity that was the "true reality" of

each entity. For every oak, pine or poplar there was the

form "tree." Even in this highly simplified version of the

Platonic description of universal "forms," similarities to

the teachings of Don Juan can be seen.

Plato's idea of universal forms presupposes, in the

end, a whole other world or "separate reality" that co-

exists on a non-temporal plane with the reality of our

senses. Don Juan takes this idea of universals a couple of

steps further. For Juan, each individual entity can be per-

ceived in a different way from that of sense-perception.

But these forms are not fixed, but rather more "alive" and

changing than our perception of them. This conversation

from Separate Reality may shed some light on this distinc-

tion:

"Do things look consistently the same every time you 'see' them?" "Things don't change. You change your way of looking, that's all." "I mean, Don Juan, that if you 'see' for instance, the same tree, does it remain the same everytime you see it?" "No. It changes and yet it is the same." "But if the same tree changes everytime you 'see' it, your 'seeing' may be a mere illusion." "When you learn to 'see' . a thing is never the same every time you 'see' it, and yet it is the same. I told you, for instance, that a man is like 66

an egg. Everytime I 'see' the same man I 'see' an egg, it is not the same egg."l Juan later makes this definition more nearly com- plete when he explains that things are composed of fibers of light and that one may tell how a man, for instance, is feeling (sick, healthy, angry, sad, etc.) by the color and intensity of his ltiminous fibers. This idea is-comparable to the ideas of auras and goes back perhaps to the biblical belief that divine beings had halos of light that could be perceived around their heads. William Blake made a distinction like that of Don

Juan's in the final lines of his A Vision of the La~t Judgement: "When the sun rises do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea?" 0, no no no, I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying "Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty;" I question a window concerning a sight. I look through it and not with it. Much has been made of the similarities between Zen 2 Buddhist teachings and those of the Yaqui sorcerer. Carlos Castaneda has vehemently opposed any comparison of the two perspectives, but I think a strong enough case has

1carlos Castaneda, A Separate Reality: Further Conversations With Don Juan (New York: Simon an:a-schuster, 1971), p. 31. 2James Boyd, "The Teachings of Don Juan From a Buddhist Perspective," Christian Century, March 28, 1978, pp. 360-363; Gwyneth Cravens, "The Arc of Flight," Harpers Magazine, September 1974, p. 43. 67

been made that I will here examine some of those simi~

larities, "imagined" or not.

We have already discussed, in part, the likeness

that the Buddhist concept of nirvana has to the sorcerer's feat of experiencing the nagual by loosening the ties that the individual component parts have for one another. This

journey into the unspeakable or undefinable as described by

Carlos in Tale~ of Power is similar also to the concept that is at the core of Buddhist dharmic analysis.

Basically, dharmic analysis is the technique for

"reversing the wheel of life" or undoing the rigid limita- tions of normal perception. James W. Boyd describes the technique's basic assertions:

. . . This is an extension of the type of analysis . . . which analyzes "self" and "body" into component parts. Critically examining each of the so-called parts of the phenomenal world, the Buddhist discovers that all phenomena initially supposed to be real, are in fact a combination of still smaller "parts 11 which in turn are simply abstractions for other units. As the analysis continues beyond the empirical realm, a theory of the "atomic" structures of all phenomena results. All phenomena are made up of dharmas (atomic units). Even the dharmas, however, are not substantial self-existents; rather, they too are designations for a composite of smaller, condi­ tioned and interdependent parts (pratitya samutpada). All phenomena appear to be empty of any identifiable permanent essence.3

We need not return again at any length to a compari­ son of and Castaneda's idea of the "parts making

3Boyd, p. 362. 68 up the whole"; the reader of this thesis will be able to make this connection himself. The purpose of both these techniques is the restructuring of the practitioner's view of the world. Taoists and Zen Buddhists use a different technique for acquiring this new description, and this too finds its American Indian counterpart in the teachings of Don Juan. The Taoist's and Zen Buddhist's attempt to undo the world by tuning into natural phenomena which one does not usually consider. Classic examples are the contemplation of the

11 l10le" in the middle of a wheel rather than the spokes of the wheel discs; or centering one's attention on the ''empti­ ness" of a. bowl rather than the container's outward struc­ ture. Both the method of dharmic analysis and the Tao­ Zen techniques for acquiring a new perception of the world seem to be portrayed at some level in the book Journey to Ixtlan. Don Juan tells Carlos that he is going to teach the apprentice "not-doing" and instructs his disciple to proceed to meditate on a small pebble placed on a large boulder. Don Juan's first directive is to focus on the unusual details to reduce the world and in so doing even­ tually enlarge it. At another point, Juan tells Carlos to focus on the shadows of the leaves in a tree rather than the leaves on the branches. 69

The details bf the porous rock, in the smalL area where my eyes were focused were so vivid and so pre­ cisely defined that the top of the round peak became a vast world for me; and yet it was really a reduced vision of the rock.4 At another point, Don Juan tells Carlos to focus on the shadows between the leaves on a single branch of a tree, rather than the leaves or the branches. This exercise is done to gain a new view of the world and is remarkably like

Tao-Zen techniques called wei-wu-~ei or action in non-action discussed above. The Zen methodology for communicating this philos- ophy has a number of other parallels with the methods of Juan, as can be found in a book by Eugen Herrigel called Zen in the Art of Archery. This "true story," originally published in the U.S. in 1953, is a first person account which deals with a philosophy professor's strivings to learn the illusive philosophy of Zen. While teaching in Japan, Eugen Herrigel apprenticed himself to an archery master, with no preconceptions as to how the training would proceed or the real reasons for it. He, like Castaneda, was one of the first Westerners to break through tradition and learn an esoteric teaching. He, like Castaneda, strug- gles, fails, gives up, struggles some more and eventually attains his goal. He, like Castaneda, is taught by a

~ <+carlos Castaneda, Journey to Txtlan: The Lessons of Don .Juan (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971), p. 198. 70

m~~t~r who is both tricky and articulate. He, like

C~$tan~da, engages in long question and answer sessions with his t~acher, has his teacher perform impossible tasks, i$ wo~ked mercilessly, and learns a method for restructuring th~ world called "not-doing." This term is actually

~roploy~d by Herrigel and though I am not trying to say that

C~$tan~da stole (consciously or unconsciously) this term from Herrigel the similarities of the two books (which are

;tn()'f~ pumerous than those mentioned) are cause enough for

~x:0m.i11ation by some student of philosophy at a later date.

H~r~ l'd like to point out one more parallel between the t-~9-&h-ing methods employed in Zen and by Juan and draw my

§9IDP

~~ tb~ apprenticeship. I was to instruct my friend to have the man (a hir~d skidrow bum) follow him or wait for him at a pJ_ ac~ where he \.'lould go with his son. The man, in r~sponse to a pre-arranged cue to be given after any objectionable behavior on the part of the child, was $~~posed to leap from a hiding place, pick the child pp and spank the living daylights out of him. '~fter tb~ man scares him, your friend must help the little bgy r~gain his confidence, in any way he can. If he 71

follows this procedure three or four times I assure you that that child will feel differently towards 5 everything. He will change his idea of the world."

In Zen and the Art of Archery Herrigel, in explana ... tion of the Zen teaching methods, presents an anecdote from

D. T. Suzuki's book Zen Buddhism and its Influences on

Japanese Culture: 6 ·

The Japanese fencing master sometimes uses the Zen method of training. Once, when a disciple came to a master to be disciplined in the art of fencing, the master, who was in retirement in his mountain hut, agreed to undertake the task. The pupil was made to help him gather wood for kindling, draw water from a nearby spring, split wood, make the fire, cook rice, sweep the rooms and garden, and generally look after his household affairs. There was no regular or tech­ nical teaching in the art. After some time, the young man was dissatisfied, for he had not come to work as a servant to the old gentleman, but to learn the art of swordsmanship. So one day he approached the master and asked him to teach him. The master agreed. The result w~s that the young man could not do any piece of work with any feeling of safety. For when he began to cook rice early in the morning, the master would appear and strike him from behind with a stick. When he was in the midst of his sweeping, he would be feel­ ing the same blow from somewhere, from an unknown direction. He had no peace of mind; he had to be always on the qui vive. Some years passed before he could successfully dodge the blow from whatever source it might come. But the master was not satisfied with him yet. One day the master was found cooking his vegetables over an open fire. The pupil took it into his head to avail himself of this opportunity. Taking up his big stick, he let it fall on the head of the master, who was then stooping over the cooking pan to stir its contents. But the pupil's stick was caught by the master with the cover of the pan. This opened the pupil's mind to the secrets of the art, which had

r.: ;,Ibid. , p. xi. 6 Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery (New York: Vintage Books, 1971), pp. r:B: 72

hitherto been kept from him. He then, for the first time, really a~preciated the unparallelled kindness of the master :1 These two passages, juxtaposed, speak for them- selves.

Now I will move to my final frame for comparison, existentialism. Here we find a modern refinement of ideas examined earlier. And, most importantly, this philosophy is similar to a philosophical strain which runs through the entire Castaneda series, and this sets this position apart from all the rest.

The existentialists, as those others discussed in this chapter, seek to define reality in terms of individual perception. This, as we have shown, is at the core of all the teachings discussed, including those of Don Juan. But, while the existentialists try simply to define how the world is built around our perception and the eastern philosophers discuss methods for achieving the realization of the sepa- iate reality, Don Juan tries to instill a more definite view of what is and what is not. Perception is not totally indi­ vidual because all sorcerers "see" certain.things in the same manner. There is sub-cultural agreement by sorcerers about the nature of the sorcerer's separate reality just as there is cultural agreement about certain aspects of reality in a country like the .

7rhid., pp. 81-82. 73

The idea that the world is incomprehensible could find a niche in all of these philosophies except in perhaps the philosophy of Plato. With the existentialists, however, this view transforms itself into the belief that the world is absurd rather than merely incomprehensible. But, with Don Juan, there is another twist. For although things may be incomprehensible or absurd, Juan makes a very important distinction between· worthless and unimportant. In a passage from a Separate Reality Don Juan proceeds from Carlos' lead to voice this distinction. Carlos is talking of an older friend who had died in a home for the aged, miserable, and feeling as if he had wasted his life. The last time I saw him he had concluded our con­ versation with the following: "I have had time to turn around and examine my life. The issues of my time are today only a story: not even an interesting one. Per­ haps I threw away years of my life chasing something that never existed. I've had the feeling lately that I believed something farcical. It wasn't worth my while. I think I know that. However, I can't retrieve the forty years I've lost."8 Don Juan points out that when he says that "nothing really matters" he doesn't mean it the way Carlos' friend did. That man was "after victories and found only defeats," "he'll never know that to be victorious or to be defeated

1 are equal. ' The source of Carlos' conflict is that Juan had told him that every act he performed was "controlled folly" or that he acted as an actor would every single time he ------8castaneda, A SepaTate Reality, p. 87. 74 acted. However, his acts were sincere because he chose to be responsible for those acts and to act appropriately, or impeccably, for every occasion. To Don Juan everything is equal in that it is not any more important than any other thing. "I didn't say worthless," he points out. "I said 9 unimportant."

The end result then may be that our actions have no meaning because of a knowledge of an impersonal and uncon- cerned universe (as with the existential view) and the knowledge too of our impending deaths, but we can choose to act as if our actions were important. And we must there- fore, with both the existential and sorcerer's perception of reality, take responsibility for our acts.

For the eastern philosophers, the struggle is to obtain the "truth" and to gain harmony with the world.

Plato talks, in metaphorical terms, of mankind's climb from the darkness of the cave. For him too there is a possi- bility of enlightenment. The existentialists have their platonic counterpart in Camus' version of the myth of Sisyphus: of endless punishment to struggle pushing a large boulder up a hill only to see it fall again to the bottom.

Camus sees positive existential possibilities with this myth.

His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his

9 Tbid., p. 87. 75

torment, silences all the idols ... I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burdens again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidel­ ity that negates the and raises rocks. He too concludes that a~l is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.lO

The struggle is everything then. The symbolic struggles for enlightenment or from the cave have led us to

Camus' more sturdy symbol for existentialism. And existen- tialism leads to Don Juan and a new metaphor.

Our death is waiting and this very act we're per­ forming now may well be our last battle on earth . . I call it a battle because it is a struggle. Most people move from act to act without any struggle or thought. A hunter on the contrary, assesses every act; and since he has an intimate knowledge of his death, he proceeds judiciously, as if every act were his last battle. Only a fool would fail to notice the advantage a hunter has over his fellow men. A hunter gives his last battle its due respect. It's only natural that his last act on earth should be the best of himself. It's pleasurable that way. It dulls the edge of his fright.ll

------10 R. Ellman and C. Feidelson, The Modern Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965}, p. 852. 11 Castaneda, Journey t6 Ixtlan, p. 85. Chapter 6

ANTHROPOLOGY OR ART?

When we arrived, Black Elk was standing outside a shelter made of pine boughs. It was noon. When we left, after sunset, Flying Hawk said, "That was kind of funny, the way the old man seemed to know you were coming." My son remarked that he had the same impres­ sion; and when I had known the great old man for some years I was quite prepared to believe that he did know, for he certainly had powers. from Black Elk Speaks, p. x "Don .Juan! I didn't expect to find you here," I said. He laughed; my surprise seemed to delight him. He appeared to have been waiting for me. from Tales of Power, p. 11 I looked at Rolling Thunder. He had no mosquitoes on him. I stared hard at him. Swarms of mosquitoes hovered about him, darting back and forth, but none touched his face. from R6lling Thunder, p. 130 It was a warm day and the flies kept on pestering me but they did not seem to bother don Juan. I wondered whether he was just ignoring them but then I noticed they were not landing on his face at all. from Journey to Ixtlan, p. 49 You cannot learn to be a medicine man like a white man going to medical school._ An old holy man can teach you about herbs and the right ways to perfbrm a ceremony where everything must be in its proper place, where every move, every word has its own, special meaning. These things you can learn--like spelling, like train­ ing a horse. But by themselves these things mean nothing. Without the vision and the power this learnR ing will do no good. It would not make me a medicine man. from Lame Deer Seeker of Visions, p. 3

76 I was conditioned to believe that everything he did had some meaning. from Te·achings of Doh Juan, p . 7 2 It doesn't matter what one reveals or what one keeps to oneself. . . . Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. . . If we don't have enough personal power, the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and that reva~ lation won't make a damn bit of different. · fro~ Tales of Power, pp. 16~17 The Indians did not have a written language so the older people had to be encyclopedias of knowledge that could be passed from one generation to another. fro~ The Memoirs of Chief Red Fox, p. 19 Such things are very secret. . One member of a diablero's family has to learn what the diablero knows. Diablero's have their own laws, and one of them is that a diablero has to teach his secrets to one of his own kin. from Teaching of Don Juan, p. 5 I was riding into the woods along a creek, there was a kingbird sitting on a limb. This was not a dream, it happened. And I was going to shoot at the king­ bird with the bow my Grandfather made, when the bird spoke and said, "The clouds all over are one sided." from Black Elk Speaks, p. 16

The sudden cry of a falcon woke me UP. . . • The chase was over. It was going to be ~ difficult shot. I was lying on my back and the bird had its back turned to me. There was a sudden gust of wind ... I suddenly felt a chill up my spine and in an unprece­ dented action I stood up and left. I did not even look to see if the bird had flown away. from Journey to Ixtlan, p. 32 For several hours after drinking the brew, I found myself, although awake, in a world literally beyond my wildest dreams. I met bird-headed people, as well as dragon-like creatures who explained that they were the true gods of the world. I enlisted the services of other spirit helpers in attempting to fly through the far reaches of the Galaxy. from ''The Sound of Rushing Water," p. 28 78

The paste was cold. . When I had finished applyp ing it I straightened up. . . . Don Juan was staring at me, I took a step toward him. My legs were rub­ bery and long, extremely long .... And from there I soared. . . . I pushed up with both feet, sprang backward and glided on my back. I saw the dark sky above me, and the clouds going by me. . I tried to look around, but all I sensed was that the night was serene, and yet it held so much power. fr~m The Teachings of Don Juan, pp. 127-8

The quotations that begin this section are only a few of hundreds which graphically illustrate textual simi­ larities between the Castaneda works and accepted non­ fiction, ethnographic literature of the same genre to which

Carlos claims his work belongs.

All of the selections are from books or articles that have characters (like Don Juan) that belong to the knerican Indian shamanistic tradition. All of these char- acters have been verified, by a number of sources as actual, living human beings. For example, Rolling Thunder, whose anglo name is John , is an active leader of the American

Indian movement. Lame Deer and Red Fox both have their photographs appearing on the covers of their books.

At first glance it might appear that the only reason

I might be presenting these excerpts is to align myself with critics such as Joyce Oates and Richard DeMille to prove that the Castaneda works are plagiarisms. However, if one examines the publication dates of the works quoted one finds that in most cases the events in the Castaneda works precede their counterparts in the compared works. I am not trying 79 to indicate that Doug Boyd, Rolling Thunder, Chief Red Fox, Lame Deer, Richard Erdoes or Michael Harner plagiarized Carlos Castaneda either. My point is directed at the very· core of what I feel is the ultimate scientific question one should ask about the relative success or failure of the Castaneda works. it is not a matter of ficticiousness or factuality, but of anthropology or art. Are these works anthropology? Are they art? In the end the answers to boih these questions I feel should be yes. The case for the tetralogy being classified as art is probably the more popular and easily defendable. In the preceding sections I believe a great enough compilation of evidence has been presented to support this case. But do the books comf up to the scientific standards that they must to be rightfully called anthropology? If this ques- tion can fairly be answered in the positive then too an answer will be made to those, such as Richard DeMille, who questioned the ethics of the board who awarded Carlos Castaneda his degree. "Why in short," DeMille asked smugly "has no scholar criticized what happened at U.C.L.A. or asked what the professors thought they were doing when they ratified Castaneda's fantasies?"! In answering this question I went to the kind of person that DeMille admitted he was ~ot, a scholar. When

1Richard DeMille, Castaneda's Journey: The Power and .!Ee ___ _Allegory (Santa Barbara: Capa Press, 1976), p. 65. 80 beginning this study I visited Professor Philip Newman who headed the committee that "ratified Castaneda's fantasies." This man was neither embarrassedr apologetic, confused or mystifying when answering questions about his old pupil. He was friendly and direct and told me in essence that there was no question in his mind that what Castaneda had done had earned him his Ph.D. The question to Professor Ne·wman and his colleagues was not "Does Don Juan exist?" But rather do the books describe in a factual and enlight­ ening manner the tradition that Carlos professed to be writing about? The importance did not lie in the descrip­ tion of Don Juan, an individual, but in the realistic pre­ sentation of Don Juan, a model, type or archetype for the medicine men, shamans, witches, singers, seers and brujos that do exist and whose methods of knowledge are outside the grasp of the usual enquirer. "Ethnographic literature is of a very broad kind," Dr. Newman said. "Your own Mark Twain was a kind of ethnog­ rapher not in that he described actual events or people in Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn but because people reading those books know that the events and characters described are of a kind that could and did exist in the context in which they were presented." Professor Newman ended our brief talk by giving me a list of books that might help me clarify this point in my ovm mind. Several of the books were anthologies or 81 collections of stories that I would have before called only myths. In these stories birds and other animals talked, people changed their forms, and a series of (in our terms)· impossible feats were performed. No one professed that these stories were factual accounts but here was the head of the anthropologj department of a California university sating that these stories, like Castaneda's accounts, were anthropology. Naturally not all anthropologists consider Castan­ eda's works as credible, let alone hold them in high regard. The professional sarcasims range from the inferred insult to the outright attnck. At the milder and more questionable end of the spec- trum we find those such as Fernando Benitez who at the same time .scoffed at Castaneda's achievement while riding on the coattail of his popularity. In a book entitled, straight­ facedly, In The Magic Land of Peyote Benitez chronicles his own pilgrimage with the Huicholes on the sacred of a peyote hunt. This book self-admittedly "should not be read as an anthropological work, but as the personal observations of a well-informed, humanistic, and erudite chronicler who brings to his craft substantial insights drawn from anthro­ pology."2

2 Fernando Reni te z, In The Magic Land of Peyote (New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1975), p. 19. 82

Castaneda is mentioned in the introduction,but his name is sandwiched between a statement about "alienated middle class romantics" and an important distinction between writers such as Castaneda and anthropologists who "like to count themselves among those whose impact on traditional cultures is minimal and whose appearance on the indiginous scene.results in the least amount of destruction and 3 change." Clearly the implication is that this work (filled with numerous substantiating photographs) is somehow better or "more scientific" than some of its predecessors, includ- ing the works of Castaneda. The cover of the paperback edition clearly shows that this work is not entirely indebted to the "old school," however, by announcing in bold print, above the title, "a revealing, first-hand report from the world of Castaneda's Don Juan." Enough said about Benitez.

At the other end of the spectrum is probably the most damaging Castaneda detractor, not only because the man is the most respected anthropologist in the field of aborig- inal Americans and.their use of hallucinogens, but also because he was once counted in the ranks ·of Castaneda's admirers. This man is Gordon W. Wasson. Supposedly Wasson

"smelled a hoax" from the very first readings of the 83

Teachings but was respectful for what he thought Castaneda was attempting to do ... bring ethnobotany to the public.

Mr. Wasson was understandably dismayed at Castan- eda's revelations about "smoking hallucinogenic mushrooms" with Don Juan since he (Wasson) was one of the very first western men to be allowed access to first-hand knowledge of shamanistic ingestion of these hallucinogens. He had heard of Indians swallowing and even drinking a concoction of these so-called magic mushrooms but never smoking them.

Other incongruities and unfortunate similarities between

Castaneda 1 s accounts and Wasson's are plentiful. Castaneda writes that Don Juan's mushrooms "turn to dust" on their own while Wasson reports that his dried mushrooms had retained their shape for more than six years and could not be crushed into dust. 4

One of Wasson's main (verifiable) characters was named Don Juan and in his works a Mazatec named Genaro is mentioned. Wasson writes of a curandero5 named Don Aurelio:

"we had been talking with a curandero for days, all una-· 6 wares." Castaneda writes, "I had known Don Juan for a

4 DeMille, p. 46. 5 . · Curandero, a term used to denote a curer or medicine man. 6 DeMille, p. 60. 84

7 whole year before he took me into his confidence." , Aurelio was blind in the right eye and Juan tells Carlos that a sorcerer's left eye usually has a strange appearance. The· list goes on. A final source of controversy and a barrier to academic acceptance comes with the translating from Spanish to English that Castaneda was supposed to have done. Not only does he fill Don Juan's mouth with numerous English idioms such as "the real McCoy," "cut the guff," "don't lose your marbles," and "golly" but tells us he is trans- lating literally at some points where literal translations were impossible. The adjective "weird" for instance is Don Juan's favorite but has no suitable counterpart in the Spanish language. What does all this mean? Does this prove, as Richard DeMille suggests that anthropologically Castaneda's works owe more than they contribute? I think not. What he fails to realize is that there are justifiable answers to all the questions that he raises. "Juan" and "Matus" are names as common in Mexico as "John 11 and "Smith" are in the United States and "Genaro" is so common that Castaneda him- self gives it to two entirely different characters in the same book. Wasson's mushrooms and Juan's are reportedly of

7carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (NewYOrk:-Iri:liiant1ne Books, Inc., 1909), p. 85 different species and are contained,differently. (Wasson's are left in the open air while Juan's are kept sealed in a gourd for a year.) Wasson's mushrooms needed to be eaten to extend their properties but he admits knowledge of others using a drinking concoction and it is not impossible that the same mushrooms could be utilized in still another way (smoking) . Also there are more than mushrooms in Don

Juan's smoking mixture.

As for the translation, one must take into account the cultural factor. When one translates they must not only be concerned with the "letter" but also with the

"spirit" of what is being translated. Any student of cross­ cultural literature knows that some phrases, especially idiomatic or slang phrases, from one culture simply would not make sense if translated "word for word" into any other language. A good translator must, therefore, substitute meanings at times for meaningfulness to realistically por­ tray a culture's personality.

At best then Castaneda is a fine "ernie" anthro­ pologist with a flair for translating from Spanish into

English not only the specifics of a sorcerer's teachings but the complexity of a remarkable individual's and cul­ ture's personality, ideas and sense of humor. A remarkable feat. At worst Castaneda's feat is not anthropology in a traditional sense, but, like Benitez his observations are those of "a well-informed, humanistic and erudite chronicler 86 who brings to his craft substantial insights that are drawn from anthropology," at least enough to earn him a Ph.D. in the subject without the aid of any sorcery. Chapter 7

CONCLUSION

We come now to the final section of this study and

as we do I am reminded of one of Don Juan's conversations

with Carlos following Genaro's description of his journey

to Ixtlan.

"What was the final outcome of that experience, Don Genaro?" I asked. "Final outcome?" "I mean, when and hovv did you finally reach Ixtlan?" Both of them broke into laughter at once. "So that's the final outcome for you," Don Juan remarked. "Let's put it this way then. There was no final outcome to Genaro's journey. There will never be any final outcome. Genaro is still on his way to I x t 1 an . "1

We have, in the preceding chapters discussed the

Castaneda series from as many perspectives. We have fol~

lowed Don Juan's own dictum and seen that the true reality

(the total critical perspective) lies where one can weasel

between those myriad of views. One of the beauties of the

Castaneda '.AJorks stems from the "impeccability" from any and

all perspectives. Looking just at the author alone these works are worth our study as literature from a biographical

standpoint. As philosophical works they rank perhaps with

1 carlos Castaneda, Journey to Txtlan: The Lessons of D~~?-~ (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), p. 264.

87 88 those of Camus. They have brought a new dimension to the serial novel, perhaps even creating a new genre, the open~ ended novel or novel without conclusion. There can never therefore be an end to our study. And as these books have come up to the above standards they have created one of the greatest characters and relationships for the r~ader since

Don Quixote and his friendship Nith Sancho Panzo,supplying enough facts about the characters, enough successes and false starts to at least give the impression of true to life accounts.

Don Juan describes "impeccability" as the condition of acting appropriately in any and all situations or as

Cyrano put it "to be in all things admirable." Castaneda's impeccability lies in his ability to express his ideas, on every level convincingly.

When he, using Don Juan as his ingenious mouthpiece, discusses something as simple as the relative attributes of the crow as the optimum bird, the argument becomes sheer poetry.

No other birds bother them except perhaps, larger, hungry, eagles, but crows fly in groups and can defend themselves. Men don't bother crows either, and that is an important point. Any man can distinguish a large eagle, especially an unusual eagle,. or any other large, unusual bird, but who cares about a crow? A crow is safe. It is ideal in size and nature. It can go safely into any place without attracting attention.Z

2 carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Y(l~g_gi Way of KEowledge (New- York: Balant1ne Boo:Ks, Inc., I90~ J, p. I 83. 89

And we have already shown that the narrative mouth­ piece could hold the reader spellbound when talking about the difference between "looking" and "seeing." In our discussions, our viewing from several per- spectives, we have seen that the Castaneda works are indeed fine literature from the individual as well as the cumula- tive view. And we have learned that although our discus­ sions have been of a cursory nature they have been enlight- ening on this one important Don-Juanian point, and here I will quote one final time from the Castaneda works: "At this precise point a teacher would usually say to his dis­ ciple that they have arrived at a final crossroad . to say such a thing is misleading though. In my opinion there is no final crossroad, no final step to anything."3 To conclude then we can really arrive at no definite conclusion when discussing the Castaneda works except to say that they are powerful and impeccable from each and every perspective. I for o~e will never again, after reading these works, be able to watch a crow flying without wonder- ing if it is trying to tell me something. And never again will I be able to read or hear the words "look" or "see" without pausing to contemplate their distinction .

.311 . d ___D 1·--. , p. 227. APPENDIX

The following pages are abstracted from Carlos Castaneda's dissertation; constituting the only difference between Journey to Ixtlan and the dissertation.

90 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Sorcery: A Description of the World

by

Carlos Castaneda

Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology

University of California, Los Angeles, 1973

Professor Philip L. Newman, Chairman

This is an emic account of an apprenticeship of sorcery as it is practiced by the American Indians of modern Mexico.

The exact cultural boundaries of the phenomena described here were never determined; and the conclusion I have arrived at, after years of fieldwork, is that sorcery does not have a cultural focus, but is, rather, a series of skills practiced, in one form or another, by all the

American Indian societies of the New World.

The data that comprises the present work was gathered over a period of ten years of sporadic fieldwork in north­ western Mexico, under the guidance and tutelage of a Yaqui

Indian sorcerer, don Juan Matus, who in 1961 took me as his apprentice. Although I was not permitted to tape-record or photograph any event that took place during that time, I took notes and thus recorded in writing all the instances

91 92

of our teacher-disciple relationship.

The main premises of this thesis, being an ernie account,

were statements v~iced by the sorcerer-teacher. They per-·

tain to the nature of the perception of reality. The sor­

cerer's contention is that the world at large, or our

physical surroundings, which appear to have an unquestion­

ably independent and transcendental objectivity, are the

product of the perceivers' agreement on the nature of what

th~y perceive. In other words, we, the perceivers, are the

dynamic parts of the world, because we no~ only imbue it

with meaning but also with "form." Thus the perceived

realness of our surroundings is due to social consensus,

rather than to its objective nature.

This basic premise of sorcery does not deny the objec­

tivity of the world. For the sorcerer the world is not an

illusion, quite the contrary, it is real, but its realness is not a fixed condition. In fact, it can be altered in part or it can be changed altogether; thus the alleged magical properties of sorcery practices. This possibility

of change is called "stopping the world," and can be

explained as the volitional interruption of ordinary con­

sensus. The "techniques for stopping the world" entail

that at the same time that ordinary consensus is inter­

rupted another one is ensued and in this way.a new "descrip­

tion" of the world is brought into "being. 93

The present ernie account, therefore, deals with,the "techniques" by virtue of which a new agreement about the nature of reality is attained with its concomitant, a new perceptual reality. In thepresent work then, the teaching of sorcery, has been taken as a process of resocialization and sorcery, in general, has been taken as a case of an alien ''member­ ship" made available to the non-member, in this case myself. The end result of this apprenticeship has been understood as the act of gaining membership. To have membership in sorcery therefore, means that the initiate becomes inti­ mately familiar with all the known instances of the new perceptual reality he set out to attain. BIBLIOGRAPHY

94 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Abrams, M. H. The Mirror and the Lamp. New York: Oxford University Pres~-1953:

Benitez, Fernando. In the Magic Land of Peyote. New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1975. Boyd, Doug. Rolling Thunder. New York: Dell Publishing Company, Inc., 1974. Castaneda, Carlos. The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. New York: Ballantine Books, Inc., 1969.

A Separate Reality: Further Conversations W1th Don Juan. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971

. Journey tn Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan. --~ew Yorf: Simon and Schuster, 197 .

---,---. Tales of Power. New York: Simon and Senus ter, 19 74.

DeMille, Richard. Castaneda's Journey: The Power and the Allegorr. Santa Barbara: Capra Press, 1976. Graves, Wallace and William G. Leary. From Word to Story. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971. Herrigel, Eugen. Zen in the Art of Archery. New York: Vintage Books,~7 .

Lame Deer, John Fire, and Richard Erdoes. ·Lame Deer Seeker of Visions. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972. Myerhoff, Barbara. Peyote Hunt: The Sacred Journey of the Huichol Indians. New York: Cornell University Press, 1974. Neihardt, John G. Black Elk Speaks. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961. (Reprinted from 1932 edition, William Morrow and Company.)

95 96

Noel, Daniel. Seeing Castaneda: Reactions to Don Juan, Writings ofCarTOs--ca:'stan_e.....,d-a-.---N-.-ew York: Capr1corn Books, 197 . ·

Red Fox, Chief. The Memoir~ of Chief Red Fox. Greenwich,· Connecticut: Fawcett Publicat1ons, Inc., 1971. Wasson, Gordon R. Maria Sabrina and Her Mazatec Mushroom Velada. New Yo:rK':~arcourt Brace, 1975 .

. Mushrooms, Russia and History, Volumes 1 and ---,.z...... -,N"'e-,--w-·York: Pantheon Publishing Company,· 19 57.

Articles

Boyd, ,Tames. "The Teachings of Don Juan from a Buddhist Perspective." Christian Century, March 28, 1973, pp. 360-363. Castaneda, Carlos. "Abstract of the Dissertation, Sorcery: A Description of the World." Dissertation Abstracts International, June, 1976, p. 5oT5b. Cravens, Gv.ryneth. "Talking to Power and Spinning with the Ally." Harpers Magazine, February, 1973, pp. 91-94, 97 . . "The Arc of Flight." Harpers Magazine, Septeii1!Jer, 1974, p. 43.

"Don Juan and the Sorcerer's Apprentice." Time, March 5, 19 7 3 , pp . 3 6- 4 5 . First, Elsa. "Don Juan is to Carlos as Carlos is to Us." New York Times Book Review, October 27, 1974, pp. 35, 38, 40. Furst, Peter. "Huichol Conceptions of the ." Folklore Americas, June, 1967, pp. 39-106. Harner, Michael J. "The Sound of Rushing Water." Natural History, June-July, 1968, pp. 28-33, 60-61. Keen, Sam. "Sorcerer's Apprentice." Psychology Today, December, 1972, pp. 90-92, 95-96, 98. Kennedy, William. "Fiction or Fact." New Republic, November 16, 1974, pp. 28-30. 97

Margolis, Joseph. "Don Juan as Philosopher." In Daniel Noel, Seeing Castaneda: Reactions to Don Juan, Writings of Carlos Castaneda. New York: Capricorn Books-;-T976. Pp. 22'8-242.

Oates, Joyce Carol. "Anthropology--or Fiction?" (Letter). New York Times Book ReView, November 28, 1972, p. 41 .

. "Don Juan's Last Laugh." Psychology Today, Septemoe-r, 1974, pp. 10, 12, 130.